


Homefront

by hlwim



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama, F/M, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 31,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hlwim/pseuds/hlwim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miss Riza's arrival in Resembool has the potential to ruin everything.  [Royai, FMA:B AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Homefront  
> Summary: Miss Riza's arrival in Resembool has the potential to ruin everything. [Royai, FMA:B AU]  
> Notes: I've fudged the time-line and the layout of the Elric house. Ed and Al finish their training with Izumi in June of 1908, and Riza arrives in August of 1908.

**One**

The trap is visible for a mile along the road, bobbing up and down the hills, and there's only one destination possible. Ed sets Al a few simple tasks but takes the bulk of defense for himself.

“Remember what teacher taught us,” Ed says, as Al nods, wide-eyed in awe. “Target your attack. We've got enough raw material here to outlast them at least a month.”

“A whole month?” Al repeats. “Brother, do you think they'll attack that long?”

“Who knows what they want,” Ed glowers darkly—he's fairly certain Granny has something to do with this, and that little toad's going to _pay_.

They don't have time for a proper wall, but Ed sketches a few fast circles around the front door and then locks it for good measure, positioning himself at an upstairs window. He tries to get Al to take the other, but Al's always too scared to stay alone.

The trap turns into the beaten-earth yard and stops, and sure enough—Granny Rockbell ties the reins to a post and steps around the back to help someone unseen disembark.

“Elrics!” Granny shouts. “Get down here! I have someone for you to meet!”

“Like hell!” Ed shouts back.

“Don't you swear at me, you little runt!”

“Come in and stop me!”

He pulls back the slingshot and aims, striking the ground at Granny's feet with an acorn. While she hops back, swearing herself, the stranger comes around the side of the trap, holding a thin suitcase in one hand and shielding her eyes with the other.

A woman: blonde hair partially hidden beneath a man's cap, tall and thin, in a dark green skirt and grey sweater, boots dusty from travel. Winry follows close, frowning.

“This is the Elric place?” the woman asks Granny.

“Yeah,” Granny spits. “At least you're getting the treatment upfront. Hate to see you fooled into thinking they're little angels and then run off when they get wild.”

“Brother,” Al whispers. “I don't know. She looks nice.”

“That's just looks,” Ed replies, taking aim again. “I bet she's after the house.”

The woman's gaze flickers across his window, and she raises her suitcase at the last second, deflecting his acorn easily.

“You're such a meanie, Ed!” Winry says.

“You knock that off now and get down here,” Granny demands. “This is Miss Riza. She's come to take care of you boys.”

“Yeah? Well, we don't need her!” Ed yells. “Al, go get some more ammo.”

“Edward Elric, you open this door right now or I'll—”

“What? Stop feeding us?”

The woman leans in and whispers something in Granny's ear, and then in a flash gathers up the downed acorn and throws it—hitting the window sill a hair away from Ed's widened eyes. Al gasps, and then scrambles down the stairs to open the door, blubbering out an apology.

Miss Riza, it turns out, is _not_ after the house. She sets her suitcase inside the door and hangs up her hat, and then follows Granny to the kitchen and sits across from Ed, returning his furious glare with a cool gaze. Winry stands at her elbow, frowning.

“I'm really sorry, Miss Riza,” Al says again, and she replies in a pleasantly warm voice.

“I understand. You were scared. You just wanted to defend your house.”

Granny sets out tea cups and pours.

“Chamomile,” she says to Miss Riza before climbing into the chair on her left and pulling the cloth cover from a basket of bread. “Edward, Alphonse: this is Riza Hawkeye. She's come a long way to take care of you two.”

“Your father hired me,” Miss Riza says.

“So what?” Ed mutters, viciously tearing a roll to pieces. Miss Riza takes a sip of her tea.

“I'll be here to cook and clean, and look after you boys when you're not in school.”

“We can look after _ourselves_.”

Miss Riza stares Ed down with a half-smile, glancing around the disarrayed kitchen—dishes dirty, curtains askew, pantry half-closed and old food spilling onto the floor.

“Well then, I guess it'll be an easy job for me.”

Granny makes stew for later—a week's worth at least, but Ed frowns at the simmering pot, determined to hate everything—and then she takes Miss Riza on a tour of the house with Al and Winry following, hand in hand.

“Kitchen, living room, library, water closet—there's a small room in the back they turned to storage, but you might like it for yourself. Easier than taking the stairs, in the latter months.”

“Thank you, I'll consider it.”

“Boys have their room upstairs, and a proper tub room. Master bedroom, some more storage, and the attic. You'll find some use up there—Trisha kept everything.”

Miss Riza's expression remains unchanged. She studies the walls and floors with that same cool gaze, as though surveying the house for prey, stepping lightly in her high-buttoned boots.

“And the yard?” she says, moving to the kitchen door.

“Far as the fence, any side. You're a bit from town, but Winry can drive the trap, and we're never more than a phone call away.”

“I can walk for a while yet,” Miss Riza murmurs, staring out into the yard. Her back is turned to them, but she raises both hands to her belly. “Thank you, Mrs. Rockbell.”

“Call me Pinako,” Granny says, unlit pipe balanced between her teeth. “I'll send Winry tomorrow with a note for the bank. Conductor said you didn't have any bags?”

“Just the one,” Miss Riza says, glancing back to the front hall. “I brought everything I needed.”

“You'll need more,” Granny replies. “C'mon, Winry. We're off home.”

Miss Riza goes out front to see the trap off, but Ed stays hunched at the kitchen table, kneading the broken bread back into dough. Al hovers anxiously in the doorway.

“Brother,” he says quietly. “Shouldn't we give her a chance at least?”

“Don't you get it?” Ed snaps. “She'll mess up all our plans. She's in with Hohenheim.”

They hear Miss Riza close the front door at last, and the quiet creak of the floorboards beneath her feet. Al edges into the kitchen and sits on a little stool near the icebox.

“Now what?” he whispers glumly.

“Now we clean,” Miss Riza says from the doorway. “I'm going to start in here. Maybe you boys could wash off those transmutation circles you drew by the door.”

Al hops from the stool, but Ed stays put, glaring in silence at Miss Riza. Torn, Al just sort of stands there with a silent, pleading look towards Ed.

Miss Riza, oblivious to the minor battle, opens the door and the windows, inviting the breeze and the waning sunlight inside, and starts at the sink. The water runs rust-red at first, but then with a whine, it heats up and turns clear. She finds the soap on her second try—the cabinet above, with the little spoon stuck end-in—and scrapes a few flakes into the water, watching them swirl into a lather of bright white bubbles.

She works slowly: the pots and pans, the plates and then bowls, the cups still crusted with milk, and finally forks and knives. As she works, Al inches across the floor, casting nervous glances to Ed and his focused demolishing of the bread. Without a look back, Miss Riza sets a towel over the counter's edge.

“They'll need to be dried, and then put in their proper place.”

Al's always been too eager to please—he takes up the towel while Miss Riza moves onto the counter-tops.

Just after sunset, Al sets the table around Ed's glare, at Miss Riza's suggestion, and she ladles generous portions of stew onto their plates. She pours milk for all of them and then sits, again across from Ed.

“Are you from around here, Miss Riza?” Al asks between bites, while Ed separates the potato cubes from the chunks of meat on his plate.

“No,” she replies—she waits to finish chewing first and carefully dabs a napkin at her mouth.

“Then how come you're here?”

“I needed a job.”

“Oh. How come?”

“My father died a few years ago,” Miss Riza says. “I couldn't stay in his house.”

“I'm sorry,” Al says quietly. “Our mom died—in aught-four.”

“Yes, your father told me.”

Ed glances up quick—Miss Riza's gaze has drifted to the open window, and Al has set down his fork, head bowed.

“We haven't seen him since we were real little,” Al whispers. “He just left one morning. He never said why.”

“He didn't care enough to come back when Mom died,” Ed interrupts. “Probably just doesn't trust us with the house.”

“Sometimes men have to leave their families,” Miss Riza says. “They can't always explain why, but sometimes they have good reasons.”

A chill rises—the breeze outside, turned cool without the sun to speed it. Miss Riza stands and closes the windows and door. Al helps her clear away, and then sits on the little stool to finish his milk while she sweeps, humming.

When they disappear into the living room together, Ed finally takes a bite from his own plate. Even stone-cold, Granny's stew is the best. He listens, chewing, as they shuffle something around, and then the wireless turns on with a pop and hiss—they must've unburied it from all the books. He can't make out the words, but the drone of a deep, soothing voice lulls him as shadows gather.

Ed leaves his dirty plate and the glass of milk untouched on the table, and then sneaks to the stairs. He makes it halfway up and stops, crouching to peer between the rails. He can see Al stretched prone on the hearthrug, fists beneath his chin as he reads a book, and Miss Riza sitting in an armchair beside the wireless, eyes closed, head tilted a little towards the speaker. She has her small hands gathered in her lap, right thumb running over her left. Her boots stand beside the wireless, heels aligned perfectly with the rug's edge.

It's still too warm yet for the fire, but the big oil lamp hanging in front of the window is lit, glowing orange and red from the scraps of flannel floating at the bottom. The disarray of cushions and dirty clothes, books and papers and biscuits hard as rock and left for the mice, looks too inviting. Ed hunches up, wrapping his arms around his middle and fighting to keep the frown.

“New movement on the Ishvalan front,” says the wireless announcer. “Rebel forces have been pushed back south by fresh troops from Central. Those State Alchemists sure are turning the tide. Go get 'em, boys!”


	2. Two

**Two**

Miss Riza never asks them to do anything. She suggests—she leaves rags and soaps out, sets the broom by the back door, tacks a new rope from the tree to the house corner—each time a harmless request, like she's expressing a desire for a little more sunlight or a lighter breeze. _Maybe you boys could_ , and if they don't—if _Ed_ doesn't, because Al's too wrapped around her little finger not to go along, that rotten traitor—she says nothing. She does it herself, eventually, without so much as a reproachful look.

Within a week she has finished cleaning and fixing up the kitchen and living room, and the back room is half-empty—enough for Al to take some wood and nails and transmute her a bedframe, and then help her stuff an empty mattress with straw. She sends them into town for groceries on the weekends, pinning the list and some money inside Al's pocket. Ed always follows, because someone has to keep an eye on Al, but he doesn't enjoy it—kicking gravel the whole way there and back.

Everything they know about her is learned by Al and shared with Winry on the way home from school. Miss Riza is just nineteen, she's from the west, her mother is dead as well and no siblings—she doles out details like a rare treat and sometimes won't answer questions at all, going quiet as she peels potatoes or twists a rag dry.

_That's not important_ is her refrain: the line she uses to shoo them out to the yard or back to the library. Everything else they have to learn by observation.

“Well, she's right-handed, and she's got okay aim,” Ed says.

“You almost lost an eye to that acorn,” Winry points out.

“That was a lucky shot! One in a million!”

“She's so pretty,” Winry sighs, ignoring him. “I wonder if she has a beau.”

“What's a beau?”

“You know, like a boyfriend. But people in Central say _beau_. Sounds more official.”

“Sounds _stupid_.”

“Well, what would you know?” Winry snaps. “ _You_ 've never been to Central.”

“You've only been _once_!”

“Once is still more than none!”

They split off from Winry at the bridge and carry on down the long road alone. Al waves and shouts good-bye for them both, and then runs to catch up with Ed.

“I don't care what you say,” Al says. “I like Miss Riza. She has a nice voice, and her food's good.”

“Not as good as Granny's,” Ed replies sharply, struggling with the bag as it slips on his shoulder.

They're quiet with the door on entering—Miss Riza's dozing in the armchair again, teacup perched on the edge of the wireless. In her lap, between half-curled hands, rests a thick envelope, wax-sealed and address scrawled in a slant: _Mjr Roy Mustang, c/o Company A, 3d Regiment, 702d Infantry, Amestris Eastern Strategic Command_.

“Do you think that's her beau?” Al whispers, as they tiptoe into the library—the only room Miss Riza has left untouched.

“Who cares?” Ed replies, a little louder than necessary. But he adds this new scrap of information to his growing mental case-file of Miss Riza's mysteries.

He's almost disappointed to have the answer to this one—since she arrived, Miss Riza has spent her evenings after dinner listening to the wireless and writing out long letters, carefully folding each into a sturdy envelope and sealing the flap with wax. They hadn't before been able to read the address, as she always took the envelope straight to the mailbox and raised the little red flag for the mailman to catch. Ed thought she might be reporting to Hohenheim—they'd asked, but she claimed he left no way of contact. They had apparently agreed beforehand that her pay was to be room and board.

But this lapse is one of many that have been piling up: mornings spent sick in the water closet, falling asleep whenever she sits for more than ten minutes, leaving lamps to burn in an empty room. Just last week, she misplaced a ration book and tore the house up to find it—folded between stacks of books left on the hearthrug—and then sat on Al's little stool by the icebox and cried for ten minutes into a dish-towel.

Ed blinks, knocking his thoughts loose—Al is busy arranging their books by subject.

“What should we start with today, brother?”

“Anatomy,” Ed says. “I think we're still on the endocrine system.”

At half-past five, they hear Miss Riza rise and shuffle into the kitchen to make supper.

“We should help her,” Al says quietly.

“Go if you want,” Ed sighs.

But Al stays with his book until she knocks.

“There's casserole,” Miss Riza calls through the door, and her voice still sounds thick with sleep. “Will you come sit at the table?”

“No,” Ed calls back. “We're not hungry!”

Five minutes later, there's another knock. Al opens the door to two plates, covered with clean white squares of cloth, and two chilled glasses of milk. Al passes a plate over, grinning, and Ed picks at it. He can admit, if only to himself—it's pretty good.

Al quits around eight. He's full and sleepy, but marks his place with care.

“Good night, brother,” he says, and Ed merely grunts in response, busy trying to puzzle out the pituitary gland.

The oil runs out at midnight, and the jug's all the way out in the shed, so Ed closes up his notes and hops down from the chair, stretching his arms over his head. For once, he takes the dirty plates and glasses—he doesn't want to give Miss Riza any excuse to wander into the library and mess anything up. She's been respectful of that privacy so far.

The rest of the house is dark—new moon's approaching, and all of the lamps have been extinguished or run out. End of the month: tomorrow Miss Riza will go around with the oil jug, carefully refilling each lamp with a chipped old teacup. Only the outside lights are electric.

Ed steps carefully around the floorboards he knows will creak, inching along with the plates balanced precariously. He concedes as far as the table—he's still too short to see over the high rim of the sink. He wonders, briefly, if Miss Riza even ate, and then dismisses the thought. The door to the back room is shut tight.

Back in the hallway, he yawns his way to the staircase, about to stumble up when he sees her.

Still awake, with one hand resting on her belly and the other tracing the edges of a blank piece of paper, Miss Riza has something of a glazed look—gaze on the silent wireless but clearly not seeing it. She looks older in this half-light, eyes set deep in her tired face. Her hair's longer than when she arrived, tucked up beneath an old kerchief. She's still wearing the same clothes, for the most part—she only has two skirts and the sweater and a few starched men's shirts. The high-buttoned boots she arrived in sit beside the back door, but she mostly goes barefoot around the house and in the yard.

“You're up late,” she says softly, head half-turned. “Is there something you need?”

“No,” Ed says, matching her tone. He thinks, halfway up the stairs, that he should've said it more mean or stomped up to his room, but she looked too tired to make the effort worth it.

Al is awake regardless, blankets pulled up to his chin, eyes widening at the open door.

“It's just me,” Ed sighs, climbing up beside Al—his own bed sits empty across the room, like always. Al pulls Ed's blanket up from behind and inches close, whispering across the pillow.

“Do you think, if we get Mom back—”

“When,” Ed cuts in. “ _When_ we get Mom back.”

“Right. _When_ ,” Al amends. “Do you think she'd let Miss Riza stay?”

Ed takes a while adjusting the blanket and settling into the mattress—giving himself time to think.

“When we get Mom back,” he says, and suddenly his throat is tight and his face hot, and Al's hand slips into his.

“Brother?”

“We might not need her,” Ed forces out. “When Mom gets back, she'll probably want to do all the things she used to. There won't be anything left for Miss Riza. Maybe she'll go home.”

“But you've heard her,” Al replies, shaking his head. “She doesn't have a home anymore, remember?”

In the silence after this answer-less question, Ed almost thinks he can hear the scrape of a bare foot on the bottom step. He holds his breath, just in case, but there's nothing more.

Just the wind, and the house as it settles around them.


	3. Three

**Three**

A few weeks before winter, Ed wakes up sick—chills and fever, coughing out his lungs and unable to keep more than water and thin broth in his stomach. Miss Riza quarantines him to the living room, packing him onto the couch beneath a mountain of blankets, where he can just see Al through the front window, trudging off to school alone.

“Sleep,” Miss Riza says, the first real order she's ever given him, and Ed squints up a glare, determined now to spend the day awake.

He watches through narrowed eyes as she moves about—Al left his books scattered on the hearthrug again, and Ed thinks he can see Miss Riza frown as she glances over the titles, but then she's tucked them under one arm and twists the other to open the flue.

“Need a chimney sweep,” she mutters, as she piles in a few logs and twigs and bits of newspaper wadded beneath, and a tiny cheating bit of lamp oil which catches instantly. She leaves the fire to stoke itself, switching on the wireless and padding out beyond Ed's line-of-sight. Still bare foot, she returns with an empty bowl and a cup of broth.

Her hand beneath his head is gentle and warm.

“Drink slow,” she says. “Be nice to both of us—aim for the bowl when you're sick.”

He wants to keep the glare up, but it's hard to concentrate on swallowing at the same time. She takes a second to fix the blankets up to his chin.

“Do you mind the wireless?”

“No,” he says and tries to sound sullen about it.

They save the news for evening—this early, there's a program of ballroom music, framed by echoing applause as the band leader calls out each new song. Miss Riza hums along to the melodies and sings when there's words—softly, as though only for herself. Her footsteps match the percussion, by design or accident, as she whirls through the living room and then out to the hall.

Ed slips into sleep without meaning to—all that energy spent trying to stay awake dooms him. He dreams about Mom.

It always starts in the kitchen: one chair pulled up to the counter which both of them try to balance on, watching wide-eyed as Mom kneads dough for bread.

“We'll make plenty, okay?” Mom says. “Enough until your dad comes home.”

The muscles in her arm flex and contract—the extensor digitorum, the flexor carpi ulnaris, the brachioradialis—working together in imperfect rhythm. The rough skin drawn over the distal knob of her ulna holds soft blue shadows and a bright ivory point of pressure. The veins running through her left hand are different than those in her right—deeper, further from the surface, tinged green at the edges as though always recovering from a bruise. The light hair dusting her arms tapers off at her wrists. Each fingernail holds an unsteady half-moon of white against a fading purple canvas, and on her right thumb, the creases of her knuckle conceal a few grains of flour.

“Hold still,” Ed says. “I have to remember this.”

It's Al's job to get the oven—he disappears from Ed's side and is suddenly reaching for the handle, his hand enveloped in the hazy distortion of hot air that slips up from the cracked door.

“Brother, don't,” Ed says, but it's Al's voice he hears, Al's hands that release their grip on the back of the chair, Al's knee that gets scraped when he climbs down too fast. Al's tears on his face, as Mom is bending over the oven.

“Mom, _wait_ ,” he sobs. “We're not ready yet.”

She half-turns to him, with only half of a smile, as the pan and her arms disappear into the blackness of the oven's insides.

“The world isn't waiting on you, Edward,” she says lightly.

Three knocks sound in the hall—Ed glances behind and then back. Mom is standing at the sink now, elbow-deep in soap suds.

“Just a little longer,” Ed pleads, in his own body now—dragging it across the floor with one arm. Al's nowhere in sight. “We're so close. We'll get you back.”

He reaches up—there's something wrong with his right arm, something that sits in the back of his throat and threatens to choke him—and his fingers are pulling at the hem of her skirt. Her bare feet stick out small against the rough-woven carpet.

“I don't know why you'd put yourself to the trouble,” she says, but it's not Mom—he looks up into Miss Riza's eyes.

It's hard to jolt awake beneath the mountain of blankets, but his eyes fly open and Ed manages to claw an opening to breathe. The air is bitingly cold and breezy: he can see faint shadows in the hallway past the end of the couch—Miss Riza standing on one foot with the front door open.

“It's no real trouble, Miss,” says a voice Ed recognizes as Mr. Sutter, the mailman. “Walking gets the blood flowing—keeps me warm when the seasons change.”

“I wonder if it's the mountains,” Miss Riza says pleasantly. “The west isn't anything like this.”

There's a shuffle of quiet noise—letters being handed over, and then a sharp gasp.

“Now, listen, please,” Mr. Sutter says, and in the shift of shadows Ed can see him reach for Miss Riza. “Don't—don't take it that way. Those boys are always on the move, and it's hard to nail down the system. If something _had_ happened—they don't make you wait on that.”

“Yes,” Miss Riza says, very faint. Her shadow seems to shrink into itself.

“Mrs. Sutter and I, we're down by the station, but our door's always open. We used to have Trisha over—she'd bring the boys when they were small. I'll send Mrs. up with some food—give you a little less to do.”

“Yes,” Miss Riza says again. “Yes, thank you. Good afternoon, sir.”

Ed hears the crunch of gravel and sits up in time to see the top of Mr. Sutter's grey cap sinking beneath the crest of the hill. Miss Riza takes a while to close the door and then just stands there, head bowed. She holds a thick packet of letters, at least twenty tied with rough brown string, level as a plate before her belly.

Her profile is perfectly still, her gaze blank and aimed somewhere towards the floor. Her usual grey sweater slips from her left shoulder, exposing the sharp curve of her neck.

“Are you feeling better?” she asks softly. “If you're hungry, I'll make something.”

He says nothing—the wireless is off again, buzzing silence between programs. Miss Riza takes a step, and then another, and the scrape of her bare feet on the floorboards disappears into the kitchen.

“Good afternoon, Amestris!” the wireless wheezes suddenly. “This is Radio Central, and we're so happy to spend this beautiful day with all of our faithful listeners.”

More music—not ballroom this time, but something bright and staccato, rippling with ups and downs. Half of the words sound like nonsense to Ed, who pushes and twists to the reach the edge of the couch. He's warm but the pain in his stomach is hunger now, so he slides to the floor feeling tired and light-headed. Miss Riza isn't singing along—he thinks maybe she doesn't know the words.

The kitchen is empty at his brief glance—back door cracked open. He tip-toes down the hall, just in case.

Miss Riza doesn't seem surprised to find him in the library a few minutes later—she breaches the solitude just long enough to bring him a sandwich and some water and drape a blanket over his shoulders. He's busy tracing a diagram of the metacarpals and mutters something like _thanks_.

Al comes home smelling like autumn smoke and floats into the room whistling.

“ _You_ have homework,” he says, sing-song.

“I've always got homework,” Ed sighs, just as a knock sounds against the closed door.

Miss Riza doesn't give them an option for dinner.

“Come to the table,” she says flatly. Ed wraps the blanket over his shoulders and follows Al out.

The whole house is dark except for the kitchen lantern—the wireless squawks some comedy show to an empty room, and Miss Riza stands with her back to them, bent over the sink. Two plates and two glasses are waiting, and Ed and Al climb dutifully into their seats.

“Aren't you going to eat, Miss Riza?” Al asks.

“I'm not hungry,” she replies, not bothering to turn. “Go ahead, boys.”

The stack of letters—still bound tight—are sitting at Miss Riza's usual place, edge aligned with edge. Squinting, Ed can just make out the first line of the address.

“What're those?” Al asks, and Miss Riza pauses in scrubbing.

“That's not important,” she says softly.

Al takes a few bites, chewing and thinking—Ed can see the gears working behind his scrunched brow. Miss Riza rinses out each teacup one at a time, and then sets them on a thin towel beside the sink. A crowd laughs over the wireless—bubbly sharp and abruptly cut off again.

“Aren't those the letters you wrote?”

She flinches, and a cup slips from her wet fingers—smashing into fine dusty pieces on the stone floor beneath the oven.

“Yes,” Miss Riza says, voice choked and tight. “I wrote them.”

“They got sent back?”

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“Al,” Ed says quietly. “ _Don't_.”

Miss Riza, dish towel in hand, lowers herself on all fours with visible difficulty, facing away from them, gingering picking up the largest pieces of jagged porcelain. Her shoulders and hands are shaking, and she breathes in hiccuping gasps, hair hanging down over her face. The soles of her bare feet are ivory over the arches, dusty blue at the heels and toes.

He can see tears welling up in Al's eyes—horrified to have caused such pain—and Ed sets down his fork and slides from his chair, trailing the blanket behind.

“Here,” he says softly, draping the end over Miss Riza's shoulders. She looks up at him through eyes wide and red-rimmed.

His arms just fit around her shoulders. She sits up, probably in surprise, but she returns the hug after a moment, blanket tangled between them.

“I'm sorry, Miss Riza,” Ed says.

She feels too cold and fragile, and she holds him tight, face pressed against his shoulder as she sobs.


	4. Four

**Four**

Suddenly, it is Miss Riza's turn to be sick. There is one morning, shortly after the letters' return, that she simply doesn't get out of bed. Ed knocks on her closed door, but she doesn't answer—he makes toast for breakfast and cold sandwiches to take for lunch.

“Miss Riza?” he calls. “We're going to school!”

Nothing. He leans his ear against the door and then shrugs at Al. They bundle up—Ed checks that Al remembers his scarf—and lock the front door.

There's a lot to catch Winry up on, so they take their time on the walk.

“Poor Miss Riza,” Winry sighs. “Do you think something happened to her beau?”

“I wonder what he's like,” Al says. “A major. Is that high up? Maybe he's busy, in charge of a lot of people.”

“It's not that he's not _answering_ ,” Ed replies. “Mr. Sutter made it sound like the letters aren't even getting through at all.”

All during school, Ed finds it harder to concentrate than usual, mind and eyes focused out the window. They're supposed to go over to Winry's tonight, but Ed feels uneasy. He thinks maybe it's the idea of losing a night of research, but on the way home, he hangs back, shuffling the frosted leaves with his boots while Al and Winry skip ahead, laughing.

The house is dark when they get there—sunset's just an hour away, but no lamps lit, no smoke from the chimney. Winry finds a note tacked to the bottom of the front door.

“She says to take the trap. She's at _your_ house.”

They get the horse out and walk him around a bit—Winry wants to show off this new trust, but Ed's too busy thinking about their own dark house and Miss Riza and what might be happening that he doesn't know.

Al picks up on his mood fast, and the ride is quiet.

“I'm sure everything is okay,” Winry offers, but there's a big shiny car parked beside their house and laundry frozen to the line. Ed stumbles down before the horse has stopped, smashing his knee into the gravel, hearing Al scramble down a little behind.

They run together and reach the front door just as it opens on Granny and a severe-looking older man, hat and black leather bag in one hand while the other sticks out for Granny to shake.

“In her condition, there's nothing I can prescribe but rest. I don't know what kind of people you are out here—but there's the damn pensioner's fund for a reason.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Granny says, taking his hand. There's a glint of lamplight across her glasses. “Sorry to have troubled you for nothing, then.”

The doctor breaks her grip and shakes out his fingers with a sour look, jamming the hat on his head and stomping to his car.

“Put your bags down, and go get the wash,” Granny says to Ed and Al. “Then help Winry put the horse in the shed. There'll be supper when you get in, and I'll look at that knee.”

They limp inside and throw their bags towards the staircase. A fast glance into the living room is all Ed can manage before Granny shoves the hamper in their arms and shuffles them back outside. Miss Riza is sleeping in the armchair, swaddled tight in blankets and feet propped up on a low table. Ed can feel the fire's heat prickling his chapped hands even from this distance.

“Go on, get it done, and then you can come back in,” Granny says, giving him a gentle shove.

They almost pull the line down with the clothes, jumping to snatch down shirts and trousers stiff as metal sheeting. It takes both of them to lug the full hamper around to the back door where they can see Winry struggling to throw a blanket over the horse's back. The wind brings tears to Ed's eyes and sends them streaming down his face as he works the water pump. They fill a bucket and find a feedbag and then shut the horse inside, with the trap tucked around the side of the shed to shield it from the wind.

The hot air inside the kitchen stings when they finally stumble inside, piling up at the door to wedge stiff boots off their feet and drape frozen scarves over the waiting hooks. The bottom of the oven glows cherry-red, and they rush as one towards it, hands held out.

Granny wanders into the kitchen with an unlit pipe clamped between her teeth.

“Roast,” she says. “Move, and I'll get you some.”

“Is Miss Riza okay?”

“She's fine,” Granny snorts, shooing them into their chairs. “Stubborn, but she'll live through that. Baby's another story.”

“What baby?” Al asks, and Granny laughs at their looks, portioning out three generous plates.

“She's _expecting_. Or did you idiots think she was just getting fat off our mountain cooking?”

Winry gasps.

“ _Really_?” she squeals. “Miss Riza's gonna have a little baby?”

“Sooner than later,” Granny replies, hopping into Miss Riza's chair at the head of the table. “We're going to stay here tonight, Winry. Den will have to do without us.”

So research time is lost to him either way—Winry always asks too many questions, and Al will want to play. Ed mashes the vegetables together, frowning.

“Don't worry about Miss Riza,” Granny says. “She'll be back up in a few days. But—”

She taps her empty pipe on the table's edge, out of habit.

“You boys will have to start doing more to help around here. The bigger that baby gets—the harder it'll be for Miss Riza to move around. And the cold's no help to her. You boys are old enough now to manage your own mess.”

“Yes, Granny,” Ed and Al say together, dully. When they finish eating, Granny supervises them in cleaning and drying and putting away the dishes. Winry helps, as they sweep the floor and hang the dripping wash to dry over the sink. There's no school tomorrow, so they only have to scrub their hands and faces at the sink before Granny lets them file into the living room.

“Hush, now, and let her sleep,” Granny says.

“I'm awake,” Miss Riza replies, and her eyes are slow to open. “I'm alright. Just a touch of what Ed had.”

“Sorry,” Ed says quietly, feeling obligated. “I didn't mean to make you sick.”

“It's not your fault, Ed,” Miss Riza smiles, as Granny settles on the couch. “These things just happen.”

“Get over here,” Granny says. “Let me see that knee.”

Ed climbs up beside her while Al and Winry close around Miss Riza.

“Is there really a baby in there?” Al asks, peering at Miss Riza's middle—covered now by her crossed hands and a few layers of blankets.

“Yes,” Miss Riza laughs gently. “I thought you boys had figured it out already. The way you study those anatomy books—”

“Dammit, Ed, hold still!” Granny scolds.

“You're making it worse,” Ed mutters, falling back against the couch arm. His heart is hammering in his throat, and he can't think why—something about the way Miss Riza said _books_ , maybe, but there's no way she knows. Not even a chance she could guess.

“Could we listen to the wireless?” Al asks, brightly oblivious.

“Yes, that would be nice.”

They catch the end of a play: pirates and navies and hurricanes. The speakers try to make the sound of lightning and high waves, but it all sounds like static to Ed.

“What's the ocean like?” Al asks.

“Big,” Granny says.

“Eight fifty-five central time. Good evening, Amestris,” the wireless cuts in. “This is Vet Kaube of Radio Central, bringing you the latest news from across the country! Sponsored by Central City's own Schlitz Razors. Never trust your face to anything less than the absolute best!”

“That's you done, then,” Granny sighs, tying off the bandage. “I think it's time for bed.”

“Aw, but—”

“I think you'd better listen,” Miss Riza says with a soft smile. “Good night, boys. Good night, Winry.”

“Good night, Granny,” they groan as one. “Good night, Miss Riza.”

At the top of the steps, Winry grabs Ed's hand and puts a finger to her lips. Then she points down the stairs, and they crouch together. Al makes a few protesting whimpers—never one for breaking rules, but still he settles beside them.

All Ed can hear at first is Winry's breathing and the static whine of the wireless, but then he closes his eyes and concentrates, and he can just hear Granny between the announcer's drone.

“I wish you'd mentioned earlier,” Granny is saying quietly, and there is a click of knitting needles to punctuate her words.

“I'm sorry. I didn't want to cause fuss.”

“No fuss. I don't know how you westerners live, but out here, we take care of each other.”

“Even in scandal?” Miss Riza asks, and there is a sharpness to her tone.

“I'm sorry I called him out here,” Granny says. “Can't imagine why the army didn't take him instead. Maybe they've got a dearth of cowardly old men clogging the hospitals in East City. Urey and Sara—they never cared about the story. They'd help the person.”

“We wanted to be married,” Miss Riza says, and the announcer almost drowns her out. “There just wasn't the time. Or the money. He was called up so suddenly—barely had his certification for a year.”

“Eyes of the law are least important,” Granny replies. “If you're married in your hearts, then you're married.”

“I don't think the Veterans' Council will take that as evidence for the widow's fund.”

“Oh, hush that. Unless that letter's in your hand, he's _alive_. Just out-of-touch.”

Ed is aware, suddenly, of the pressure of Winry's hand against his. He looks over—she closed her eyes, too, and leans a little forward, frowning with concentration.

“Pensioner's not a bad plan,” Granny continues carefully. “Could make a day of going down.”

“Take the kids?”

“Give them something to do,” Granny harrumphs, needles clicking. “Something besides eavesdropping _when they should be in bed_.”

Winry gasps, dropping Ed's hand, and then they're all scrambling for the bedroom, throwing themselves under the blankets and waiting for the sound of Granny on the stairs.

But she doesn't come. The threat, apparently, was more than enough.


	5. Five

**Five**

The night before they're set to leave, Granny fills the tub near-scalding and scrubs them each red and raw. One by one they are called in and cleaned thoroughly, and then left to stand wincing in the hall while Miss Riza drapes towels around their shivering shoulders. She has cocoa waiting downstairs, and they are allowed to drink it in front of the fireplace while Miss Riza combs their hair flat.

“Straight to bed,” she says firmly. “We have to be up early and dressed _before_ Mr. Sutter gets here.”

“What about breakfast?”

“Mrs. Sutter will give us something to take along.”

She holds one hand to Ed's temple to balance as she picks at a stubborn knot. Al, finished with his cocoa, curls against Miss Riza's side, ear pressed to her belly.

“Do you think the baby's excited to go on a train?”

“I doubt he's put much thought into it,” Miss Riza laughs, as Winry comes trudging in, hair dripping, miserable. Ed shifts off to Miss Riza's other side and checks for himself—listening for the familiar heartbeat, just to be sure. Now that they know, it's important somehow to confirm every day. “He's been quiet today, though. He likes to keep me up at night. Don't wake him.”

“We won't, _promise_ ,” Al says, as Winry settles down and Miss Riza shakes the comb clean.

“You remember the conditions, don't you?”

“Yes, Miss Riza,” they chorus.

“Stay in sight...?” she prompts.

“Stay together,” Winry drones.

“And _listen_ ,” Al finishes.

“Very good. And that's exactly what you're going to do, right? You wouldn't even _dream_ of giving me trouble while we're in the city.”

“No, Miss Riza.”

Winry's hair transforms beneath Miss Riza's deft fingers from a tangled soaking nest to a neat plait that rests square between her shoulder-blades. Finishing with a stout ribbon, Miss Riza taps Winry off her lap, and Winry crosses to the window, studying her shadowed reflection.

“Will there be time tomorrow to put it up like yours?”

“Of course,” Miss Riza says, unraveling Ed and Al from her sides and standing. She stretches—the curve of her spine sharpening like a bow. Granny trumps down the steps with Den trotting along.

“Water should be fine once you get up there,” she says to Miss Riza. “Mind you're careful on the stairs.”

“There's a rail, isn't there?”

But still they all listen to her retreat until they've heard the echo of the bathroom door closing.

“Not a _spot_ of trouble for her,” Granny says to them, hands fixed to her hips. “No running off—no _wandering_. Miss Riza's not back up to full strength yet, so you boys help her out in every way you can.”

She's too serious for a sullen chorus—they nod in mute terror while she collects their empty cocoa mugs and then shoos them up to bed.

The coal brazier isn't big enough to heat the whole room, so they pile onto Al's bed in a mess of pillows and blankets, cuddled close the way they used to as babies. Good-nights are whispered through giggles, and then they lie awake in excited silence.

Specifics had been carefully avoided—Miss Riza needed time to _convalesce_ , as Granny said, and there was school to occupy the days. They did their chores, and Granny went over to tend the shop a few days a week, and snow drifted up the hill, little by little.

There had been signs, of course—little hints piling up, like the purse of coins Miss Riza had them walk down to Mr. Sutter, the envelope he sent them back with, the tin of bootblack and rags Granny left by the back door, the mothballed re-emergence of what Ed always thought of as _church suits_ , and the arrival by truck of Mr. Mueller with the week's coal, which for some reason necessitated a closed-door kitchen chat with Granny and Miss Riza. They fought over who would listen at the keyhole and were quickly discovered, scolded, and shooed outside.

By the time break was announced at school, the whole house seemed locked up in that silent frenzy of anticipation. Miss Riza was growing stronger—and bigger—day by day, and one evening Granny sent them up to the attic for a box of clothes that used to be Mom's. They came back down in motley—laughing at the big tenty dresses and odd-shaped trousers. Miss Riza was too shy to model but picked out a few warm pieces in soft colors.

And then, at long last, the day arrived, expected and unexpected and exalted and droll. Just yesterday, they were called inside from chores and sat at the table and told, in simple detachment and firm warning, that all their patience and good behavior had paid off: they were going on a trip to East City. Ed and Al and Winry, plus Miss Riza—Granny said she was too old and far too valuable to be jostled about on the train ride.

Two days and one night in a hotel—shopping and walking about and new sights and new people. Winry could hardly be contained at the table, and Al nearly bounced himself out of his seat. Ed sat quietly, but inside he, too, was boiling with excitement.

He is still now just as before, watching the brazier's faint light dance across the bedroom. Winry shifts on the pillow—already asleep. She curls up on Ed's left, and on his right, Al is snuffling into the blanket. Ed blinks up at the ceiling.

It's far more than tomorrow's trip that keeps him awake, that rolls him out from beneath the blankets and sends him padding across the room—they're _finally_ ready, and all that remains is to gather the ingredients to bring Mom back.

Al and Winry close around the now-empty space on the bed as Ed leans against the door, opening it slowly onto the dark hall. A strip of light is visible beneath the tub room door at the end of the hall—he inches past, in case Miss Riza might be listening, in his mind reciting the formula.

He takes the stairs slow—one step at a time, on the edges where the wood won't bow and creak and give him away. He can hear Granny's snores from the living room—an hour at least until she wakes herself up with the noise and tromps off to wherever it is that trolls sleep. Ed makes a face and scurries past the open door to the library.

They have plenty of water and carbon, of course. Ammonia, lime, and salt can be bought down at Mr. Bohn's store in town. Easy enough to obtain and keep hidden—Miss Riza is never over-careful in checking the shopping bags or counting up the change when they come back from shopping.

Ed pulls the list from its hiding place between some old fairy tale books. He can just make out his own handwriting by moonlight, as he kneels beside the open window and squinting at the creased paper.

But as for the rest? Phosphorus and saltpeter might prove the most difficult—they aren't even _listed_ in the ration book, except to warn of possible requisitioning should the war drag on. Mr. Bohn lacked the remainder as well: molybdenum, sulfur, cobalt, potassium. Too exotic for most local alchemists, and anyway what did two little boys want with them anyway?

But Ed looked him straight in the eye and smiled.

“We just want to practice,” he had said. A half-lie.

The pencil marks are smudged from his tracing—fading into the paper, and Ed carefully folds the list up again and tucks it away. It hadn't been easy, these last few weeks, finding the time to research between chores and Granny's lectures and Winry's questions.

Miss Riza was their best defense on that front, oddly enough. Every day, with little more than a nod, she bought them an hour or two's peace in the library—Winry had taken to Miss Riza in a big way, bringing her blankets and trailing around once Miss Riza was back on her feet. It was simple for Miss Riza to nudge Winry into the living room, and Granny would always follow, setting up with some knitting or simple metal piecework.

He doesn't know how much Miss Riza knows, and he's too scared to guess. Even the fleeting thought is enough to ice his excitement, and Ed tries hard to shake it loose.

She knows _nothing_. He's sure of it.

Granny is still snoring when he sneaks out of the library: only minutes have passed since he left the warm confines of Al's bed. Tiptoes, the edges of the staircase—he makes it to the door itself and freezes. The tub room door is ajar, and he can see the flicker of shadow moving inside.

Wisps of steam curl out around the corners, and Ed is holding his breath, wondering if she'll hear the click of the turning knob.

But Miss Riza is in her own world, facing away from him: humming quietly to herself, pulling a brush through her own hair now. It's gotten so long—he hadn't noticed, or she hadn't let it down so much lately. Not nearly as long as Winry's yet, but she braids it back just the same.

Ed watches the movement of her fingers, almost entranced, as they weave between and around, sawing back and forth, creating order of the tangled chaos. Her arms, bent upward over her head, pull free of loose sleeves, and the neck of her nightdress slips down past her shoulders.

There is something red on her skin, like blood but not. Flat, lacking the luster of liquid. A painting, maybe: the tails of two red serpents entwined— _braided_ , even—and they seem to writhe and coil beneath a flask and flame. The trapezius, contracting and extending, shifting skin, articulating within the confines of solid bone.

All change, Ed thinks, is a sort of transmutation.

Two thoughts surface at the same moment: that tattoo is alchemical research, and this is something he was never meant to see.

He cracks the door enough to slip through and closes it slowly, leaning his forehead against the wood. And he stays there, listening, eyes closed, until Miss Riza's quiet hum has faded back downstairs.


	6. Six

**Six**

Years later, reflecting back on this first trip to East City, Ed will remember only impressions: the cold slice of air beyond the blankets, the softness of Al curled up against his back, the starchy-stiffness of his best suit. Winry's squeaky yawn and Den's excited bark, Miss Riza's bare hand and her boot-clad feet stepping up on the truck's running-board, the marshmallow cloud of exhaled breath that seems to float just past her lips. They are roused and dressed and bundled into the icy cab of Mr. Mueller's truck, and they drive slow into the narrowing western shadows, chased by dawn. Winry in the middle, then Ed, then Al, then Miss Riza, and the road jostles them together and apart.

They're still not quite properly awake when the truck pulls up to the Sutters' front door, and Ed watches dumbly as Mr. Sutter offers Miss Riza a hand to step down. She balances her wide-brimmed hat with the other hand, and Mr. Mueller is setting Winry down from his side of the cab. Ed stumbles out last, with Al's hand gripping the hem of his jacket.

Mrs. Sutter has cocoa waiting—the first mouthful slides down to Ed's belly and warms him through. Eggs, sausage with gravy and these perfect little pockets of potato bread: they until sated and then eat some more, listening for the whistle of the approaching train. Miss Riza lets them stand up on the platform when it arrives, huddled close to conserve heat.

A lumbering black dragon, twisting a long green tail through its own smoke: the engine chugs and sputters to a stop with a bone-weary groan. With a short shake of her head, Miss Riza holds them back. Doors at the end of each car are thrown open, and stooped old men in narrow grey uniforms exit, synchronized near-perfect in checking their watches and folding out the steps hinged beneath each car's exit.

“Let the people get off first,” Miss Riza says. 

It isn't much of a wait—hardly any passengers this early, and Resembool is the end of the line. They watch in rapt silence as the soot-faced rail-men clamber across the yard with those massive wrenches lolling on their shoulders. The boss, Mr. Tritten, pauses a moment, tipping the brim of his flat cap at Miss Riza.

“Mind the gap, boys,” he says, grinning, voice booming through the morning quiet. He crosses behind the train, whistling his own tune.

“They're gonna switch the engine,” Winry says, chin lifted. “They spin it around so the back is the front.”

Ed frowns.

“How would _you_ know?” he demands.

“Because I've _seen_ it before, dummy.”

“Let's not start the trip on that foot,” Miss Riza interjects gently. She steps between them, but not before Ed sees Winry stick out her tongue in his direction.

In silence more annoyed now than rapt, they watch the men unhook the engine from the front car—the steel pin is wider around than Ed's whole leg. The engine lurches forward, stopping just past the end of the platform on a narrow steel bridge that stretches over a deep pit.

“Stand clear!” Mr. Tritten calls out, and a rumble splits the morning air. The engine swings away from them in a long arc, tracing the edge of the pit: a perfect circle, extending down eight or ten feet, with the shadows concealing the clank of machinery.

Ed leans down, fixated, watching for the rails to stop and match up with the curved track running parallel to the emptying cars.

“Maybe you should come back a bit,” Miss Riza calls, and Ed turns. He's surprised at the distance—more than four meters between them, with Winry and Al watching quietly, still bleary-eyed. He doesn't remember moving, but there he stands at the edge of the platform, separate.

Miss Riza is half-smiling, still reluctant to scold, and she holds a hand out to Ed. Al holds tight to her other hand, shifting uncomfortably in his stiff boots. Frowning beside him, Winry carries the basket holding their lunch with both of her narrow arms. Her little purse of bills and coins fit neatly inside Miss Riza's little handbag, though Ed saw her tuck a 500 note into the collar of her dress earlier that morning.

With a sigh, Ed crosses the platform and takes Miss Riza's hand.

The cars empty, and the engine lurches into place, and they are approached by one of the grey-suited men. His hair and pencil mustache are bright white to match is gloves, and his smile is so wide that it pinches his eyes closed.

“Four tickets, then, and we'll let the fifth ride for free!” he says, tipping his cap to Miss Riza with a chuckle. He takes the tickets from her and tears each in half, neatly, handing them out again like party favors.

“Keep this close, chaps,” he says. “I'll come around at each stop and ask to see it. For safety, of course.”

He bends down to pick up the carpetbag at Miss Riza's feet, and his sleeve lifts at the wrist, revealing a flash of metal. Winry snaps up.

“That's the T67 Light Services model,” she says, and the man falters. “They released the T75 specs this year, in the catalog, and now it comes in copper or brass!”

“Oh, this old thing,” the man exhales, keeping his face down as he helps Miss Riza step onto the train. “Just plain iron for me. Still serviceable.”

Winry looks like she wants to say more, but Ed elbows her, catching Miss Riza's fleeting embarrassed frown as the man hurries back down the platform. An older woman with a severe-looking bun is waiting to usher them to seats halfway down the car. Miss Riza sits against the window, and there's a bit of jostling over who gets to share her bench. Al wins, and Ed and Winry sit on the bench opposite, cross and quiet.

“Winry,” Miss Riza says softly, as Al begins to nod off and the train doors are slammed shut one by one, “I know automail is something you see everyday, but for most people, it can be...”

She bites her lip and looks away from them. Winry has set the food basket between them, and Ed can see her hands twisting in her lap.

“I didn't mean to—”

“You didn't do anything wrong,” Miss Riza says quickly. “It's just that sometimes people get uncomfortable about having automail. The reason they have it or what happened to them...those usually aren't good memories, and some people don't do so well when they're—when they're reminded of that.”

She finishes with a smile at them, but there is something off about it, and it fades quickly. Winry nods at her lap, and Ed almost feels guilty. They all look anywhere but each other.

The trip is long and sleepy and quiet. Twice, they are diverted to a side track, to let a military train going one direction or the other pass them by. The grey-suited men call out the name of each station and every quarter hour. Just before noon, Miss Riza wakes them all and has Winry pass out lunch.

Mrs. Sutter packed them sandwiches and crackers and an apple each. They eat carefully, brushing off crumbs with each bite. With Miss Riza's amused permission, they jostle down to the end of the car, where Winry demonstrates (a little _too_ show-off, Ed thinks) how to take the tin cup and turn the spigot for water. They each drink a cupful and rinse their hands, and then fill the tin cup and walk it back to Miss Riza, who drinks and thanks them and wets the corner of a white handkerchief to dab their cheeks and mouths.

The empty basket makes them restless—the sun is up and the countryside flies past, and they crowd up to the window, fogging the glass with their breath and then blaming each other for obscuring the view. Miss Riza dozes a bit but wakes herself as the first crouched warehouses begin to fold out of the landscape.

The city rises around them in unsteady spikes as the train slows. They are ready, the instant the brakes begin to grind and the conductor calls out, to jump from the car and run out into the city proper, but Miss Riza makes them wait—lets the rest of the car filter out first.

Ed takes the carpetbag and Winry holds the empty basket and Al holds Miss Riza's hand, and they all huddle close on the crowded platform.

Again, he gets only impressions: soot-stained walls, scraps of paper crushed underfoot, a strong smell of onion and roasted meat, and all around voices and the press of bodies. No one looks at them, or even bothers to step aside. But Miss Riza seems to know the way, and Ed focuses on the dark purple blur of her hat and traveling coat.

They stumble through the wide station doors and into the plaza: East City awaits.


	7. Interstitial: October 11, 1905

**Interstitial: October 11, 1905**

The house echoes in a way he doesn't remember. Roy closes the front door easily—he had to push hard against the weight when he was younger, but he's grown since then. Or maybe the house itself shrank in his absence.

Riza has disappeared into the depths of shadow beyond the foyer, opening doors as she goes.

“Here,” she calls out softly, and he follows.

She is fixing the curtain shut in a half-empty room, faced away from him. Hunched over, arms drawn in, she is a small silhouette against the bright orange of sunset, its luminance unaffected by the flimsy fabric. He can see, even from the doorway, that she is shaking.

“We don't have to do this now,” he says gently, stepping forward, but her shirt slips down from her shoulders and pools at her feet, and he stops, hand outstretched.

Her bare skin reflects the sunset's glow—crisscrossed lines of red ink from her neck to the gentle outward curve of her hips, a mess of Xerxian words and serpent tails and matrices of line and meaning. Already the academic within is buzzing, making connections and inferences from the first hungry sweep of knowledge.

“He did it himself,” she whispers to his silence. “It took almost a year.”

And then disgust stops him—a visceral revulsion that halts his unwitting progress across the floor. Goosebumps have erupted from her shoulders down, and she's shivering, arms crossed over her chest. Her head ducked down—embarrassed at the exposure or overwhelmed with a loss no less severe for being expected.

“He did this,” Roy repeats, matching her softness, voice thick. “I thought he meant—manuscripts, papers. The key to his library.”

She shakes her head, slowly.

“He burned all that. The night he was finished? Burned everything in the house. He used the fireplace with the blocked flue—I thought we were both done for.”

“I remember the one. I told him he should get it fixed.”

Riza gives a soft sound, somewhere between a weary sigh and a short, resigned laugh.

“Did you ever know my father to listen to practical advice?”

He takes another step back and turns around—the floor creak enough, by any luck, to hint that he isn't looking anymore. That she's safe.

“We don't have to do this now,” he says again. “Please. We can just talk. I actually did miss you.”

Fabric hisses over skin.

“Miss me?” she says, and he imagines that he can hear the rasp of every button. “I was just a little girl when you left. With a little girl’s crush.”

“I thought it was sweet,” he replies, glad for the shift. “That little kiss—it kept me going through the worst parts of academy, you know.”

She walks past and holds the door open, head ducked still. But her mouth curves just slightly, with the faintest of smiles.

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” she says.

“I would never.”

She makes dinner, and they talk about little things. He describes his life and his new friends in military precision, and she mostly listens, shying away from details about herself.

“You _know_ ,” she says to every question. “You remember how it was.”

Around midnight they finally fall quiet, sitting opposite at the half-cleared table. The fresh autumn breeze is almost too brisk, but they keep the kitchen door cracked to clear the smoke. Riza holds her cup with both hands, staring down into the slow swirl of tea.

“What are you going to do now?” Roy asks quietly, and she shrugs.

“Go to bed.”

“No, I mean…”

He leans back—what _does_ he mean? With the house, with her life, with the secrets etched into her skin? Her short hair refuses to be contained, falling from behind her ears and covering her averted eyes.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Finish school, at least. I’ve missed a lot, but the headmaster’s always been kind. Then there’s the house. It’s mine now, but—all the work. And his debts, too. He left me those.”

“I could help.”

Her glance flickers up, briefly.

“Haven’t you done enough? For me?”

“I could do more.”

He sleeps that night in the old guest room—one of the few Riza had always managed to keep clear of her father’s clutter. It shares a wall with her bedroom, and through the thin wood and plaster, he can hear her shifting about.

The room is lit by one oil lamp, set in the window beside a jar of fresh flowers. Clean white towels are stacked on the vanity's shelves, beneath a porcelain jug and basin—chipped at the rim, but polished to shine. Smiling at his own reflection in the vanity's mirror, Roy leans his ceremonial saber behind the door, shrugs off his dress jacket, and carefully unlaces his boots. He hadn’t thought to bring much with him, but a night shirt and trousers are waiting, set against the pressed pillow and carefully folded-down sheets.

The water from the tap is ice cold and runs brown for a few minutes, so Roy takes off his shirt while he waits, trying to keep the creases sharp. When the water is clear, he fills the jug and turns back, and Riza is standing in the door, eyes wide, clutching a blanket to her chest.

“I thought—” she says, blush creeping up her neck, “I thought you might get cold, and I just—wanted to bring you this.”

Her stare travels from his bare chest up to meet his eyes, and she gives a panicked little jump, tossing the blanket onto his bed and hurrying back into the hall, slamming the door behind her.

He smiles, and it takes him a while to fall asleep that night.

They move around each other shyly for the first few weeks. Two years apart is nothing on the five he spent in this house, but all that happened in the interim—to him, to her, to whatever it was they had once built—seems so much larger than the three or four rooms they share in this drafty old house.

Roy sends a telegram to the district commander in Wellesley, and he is quickly granted a year of academic leave. West City Command sends along the boilerplate threat of inspection, but the brass cares only for the eastern conflict, and any dispatched officer would likely be discouraged by the station stop and carry on, checking off Roy's progress as observed.

It is already too late in the year to do much for the ailing garden and grounds, so they turn their attentions inward, clearing debris from disused rooms and patching up holes where early snow seeps in. Roy's small militarystipend stretches enough for food, though Riza disappears from time to time into the forest, returning with bony winter grouse and bagfuls of small sour apples.

She cooks, and they clean, and Roy marks out transmutation circles on the walls and floors to fix plaster cracks and bowed beams. They eat at somewhat regular intervals, and at night they sleep only a wall's width apart. She studies her textbooks, and he pours through old manuscripts, and they talk—stiffly at first, formally, with too little eye contact and too much hesitation.

Everything kept so simple. They don't discuss that little goodbye kiss or her confessed childhood crush or the promise he made, when he was fourteen and she was ten, that he would marry her when her father was gone, that they would make for themselves a proper family—the kind neither had known but always had wanted. They discuss food and weather and academics—Roy never had much of proper schooling, and Riza asks all she wants of alchemy, free of her father's disapproving silence.

She has to offer a few times before he will agree to look again at the array—her father's final work, stitched deep into her skin.

“It didn't hurt,” she says, as he washes the dishes, and she stands beside him, towel ready to dry. “After a while—I couldn't really feel it anymore.”

Roy says nothing, watching the soapy water flow around the sluice of his still hands. Filling, emptying, creating flat lagoons and tempestuous falls.

“Don’t hate him,” she says to his silence. “Please. He did the best he could. He trusted me. This work was his whole life, and he trusted _me_ with it. That means something.”

The pressure of her thin hand on his bare arm is slight—no more than a whisper of warmth.

“Do you really believe that?”

She blinks, and there is something a little broken in her eyes.

“I have to.”

Roy must remind himself, as evening draws on and she stretches out on his bed, bare-backed and face buried in his pillow, that she is only sixteen. The work takes just over a week, and while he transcribes the array from flesh to parchment, they don't speak. Afterward—when he turns away, when she slowly sits up and covers herself—she might ask little questions or offer to bring tea or say good night in a small voice that still manages to echo through the quiet room.

“Do you understand it?” she asks one night—the last night, as Roy is blowing the ink dry on his finished transcription.

“Not yet,” he admits. “Not completely. But I'll figure it out.”

He doesn't like to work alone—the study still feels heavy with Master Berthold's lingering shadow—so Roy moves a table into the sitting room and arranges a space for Riza between the books and pens. She still has her exams to finish, and they welcome the new year hunched over their separate work, trading sips from a dusty bottle of wine they'd found wedged behind the stairs in the cellar.

The snow outside piles up and melts and piles up again, and the house spirals into something resembling a habitable space. The shyness evaporates with work—there is no escaping the intimacy into which winter forces them. As they clear away the debris of Berthold's life, room by room, Roy finds himself keeping to the kitchen or the sitting room or the narrow corridor between their bedrooms—proximity to Riza almost as instinct. She doesn't seem to mind, day by day becoming once again the bold girl who sent him off to academy with a grin and a quick kiss to his cheek.

“You remember what it was like,” she says, because Roy never does. “There was us, in this house, and everyone else. He was so paranoid, towards the end—I couldn’t go back to school. After you left, he said he couldn’t trust anyone else. He wouldn’t.”

“I shouldn’t have left like that,” Roy sighs. He can’t see her face over the books piled between them—hearing only the scratch of her pen across paper. “Maybe if I stayed—”

“What?” she cuts in. “You could have protected me from him? From what he did?”

He hears the chair creak and watches the cut of her shadow as she sits back.

“Look, Roy, whatever else you think: this was _my_ choice. I didn’t have to do this. I didn’t have to stay. He asked, and I said yes.”

The section beneath his still hands—he remembers following the curve of her shoulder-blade, wondering at the precision of each etched line.

“It was my _choice_ ,” she says. “Please don’t take that away from me.”

Spring comes unexpectedly up the road, in wide muddy puddles and tired bird calls. Riza sends in her essays by post, and Roy negotiates a loan with the banker in the village. The house itself is all they have for collateral, but the secrets of flame alchemy are not as opaque as they had seemed in the winter’s quiet.

“With the research grants they give to state alchemists, I could build you two whole new houses,” Roy says, resetting the targets—bent tin cans on a black stone wall. Riza watches from the back door's stoop, brow raised. With the waiting twig, Roy fixes the edges of the transmutation circle traced into the mud.

“How do you plan to get certification with _this_?” she sighs.

“I’m getting better,” Roy says defensively, but she smiles wide and holds out the lighter: only teasing. Their fingers brush as he takes it back—and he shares her smile, as they both blush and look away.

He takes position at the mark, crouched to avoid mud on his trousers. He centers his concentration the way he remembers being taught—eyes closed, focused entirely on the in-and-out of breathing, on the roll of air from his nose to his lungs, expanding, contracting, widening and restricting. He narrows each separate sense, pushing awareness through each tendrilous nerve.

He can’t entirely remove thoughts of Riza, crouched as well in perfect silence, watching him with those bright, steady eyes. But he doesn’t fight it—he lets the images come, the smell of her and the remembered warmth of her hand, and then he lets them pass on. He envisions the flame, letting his thoughts flutter around like moths.

“Alright. Call the targets.”

The air is flat today. No breeze—just the heaviness of coming rain. He brushes the edge of the circle, and the spark of transmutation curls around his hands.

“Third from left,” Riza says softly. “Center. Fifth.”

He burns himself a lot, at first. It’s one thing to manipulate compounds in a flask—a finite space, relatively, whereas oxygen is everywhere all at once. If he’s too quick with the ignition, flames eat his fingertips—too slow, and the spark fizzles to a sad wet plop. Riza patches him up, patiently, no reprimand or recrimination. But still he is embarrassed and frustrated and useless—he takes ten minutes to create destruction that the military can perform in seconds, at ten times the scale.

“It’s not your concentration,” Riza says, pouring cool water over blisters. “I’ve never seen anyone focus the way you do.”

“Concentration is nothing if I can’t control it,” Roy replies, close enough to a snap that she flinches and he feels ill. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault that I’m no good.”

“You were never meant to get it right away. But you will. I believe in you.”

“I suppose one of us has to,” he grumbles, but he still smiles back.

There is always yard-work to distract Roy from his academic failings—they find, through layers of dead leaves and broken bottles, enough stonework to suggest the vague remains of a wide terrace in front of the house and its cobbled path leading back to the road. They reshape and fence and plow and plant a garden, hanging lanterns and shutters back in place. Once the shed has been liberated of thorns and vines, they find some paint in its depths, and the door and the window frames receive a clean new coat of blue.

Roy has something of an eye for wildflowers, and as the year grows warmer, he fills each jar emptied of preserves with handfuls of bright blossoms. Riza still hunts, and he harvests, and the silence now is a comforting quiet.

One morning it starts to rain, and quite suddenly Roy realizes that a whole year has passed. Riza is walking ahead with a bouquet of late daisies—for Berthold. The cemetery is on their way to the village, where a hired carriage waits to take them into Wellesley. A year, and they have been summoned, separately: Riza for her final marks and Roy for inspection. The commander, as expected, could not be bothered to step off the train himself, but still demands an update. Roy certainly won’t complain—the telegram held a not-unwelcome implication of promotion and stipend increase. The banker has been patient, but no debt can sit unpaid forever.

The carriage is unsteady, and Roy sits stiff-backed in his dress uniform—he turns the hat around and around in his hands until Riza takes it from him, smoothing the crease his nervousness has worked into the band. In academic black, she is positively serene, ankles crossed and hair combed neatly behind her ears. She draws his hand over to her lap and smiles.

“It’s not like they’re assessing you, is it?”

“No,” he confirms. “That’s still Central’s jurisdiction. They just want to know that I’m not wasting time to avoid deployment.”

“Maybe you won’t be deployed at all,” Riza says. “The war has to end soon.”

Roy says nothing, turning to watch the countryside melt pass. Most civilians assumed the same as Riza—any ongoing war must eventually end, as they always had before, and this little conflict could be no different. Drawing on its fifth year, now, and everyone agreed: more than long enough to quiet the Ishvalans and put the whole district to bed.

The carriage drops them in Wellesley's main square, and they head off in opposite directions: military headquarters east and school west. Riza stands on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

“I need it more than you,” she says, wiping at the smudge of color left on his skin.

Roy's inspection takes less than five minutes: the commander is in the middle of lunch and gestures vaguely for Roy to fill out the forms himself. Released early, with a _satisfactory_ mark on all points of progress and the promise of an extra five thousand per month, Roy salutes the guard and then steps out into the rain alone.

He walks down to Riza's school, although he knows she has hours yet. Groups of little girls are gathered in the yard, sheltering beneath trees and the roof eaves. He smiles at a pair standing near the gate, and they smile back, giggling. When he tips the brim of his hat, they scatter, shrieking in delight.

Eventually, he finds himself back in the square. They'd had just enough money to pay the carriage driver—dinner too, if they were careful. Huffing breath into his cupped hands to keep them warm, Roy circles around outside the shops with a careful eye.

Clothes, dry goods, hardware—standard fare for a small stop on the western line. The country is mostly coal mines, with coal miners’ interests. He remembers, as a little boy, being confused by the short buildings and dirt lanes.

At the corner opposite the train station, a flower shop squats—a broad brown toad of a building, with the proprietor’s name recently etched in winking gold letters. Roy can see an old woman rearranging the vases in the window, and she smiles when he catches her eye.

“Good afternoon,” she says, as the bell chimes over his head, and Roy shakes the rain from his shoulders. “Have a glance or get clear of the rain—I’ll be through the back way. Shout if you need something, dearie.”

He watches her toddle away and disappear behind a stiff curtain. Still smiling, he tucks his hat beneath his arm and flattens his hair—always unruly, despite Riza's best efforts this morning. The humidity isn’t helping, of course—Roy ducks the blast from the heat vent overhead and steps further into the shop, twisting around to take in the explosion of color on every side.

This reminds him of home—the nomadic flower carts wandering up and down the main roads with their wares, handing out free poppy blossoms on memorial days. He remembers, every year, knottled fingers pushing the stem through his buttonhole, the weedy smiles they would offer, the way the girls in the bar would fuss and call him _military-in-the-making_. It made him proud, then embarrassed, then contemplative, then nostalgic.

When he was sent out for apprenticeship—presented in his threadbare winter coat and thrice-polished shoes at Master Hawkeye’s door, barely more than twelve—he filled his bare room with blossoms, season by season, buttercups and black-eyed susans, wild carrot and daisies, asters and crocus. Riza had shown him which were good to eat, and when he left every winter for home, he would fill a few jars to tide her over.

He pauses now at a stand of roses—vibrant with color, staining his hands red with reflected glow. There’s a creak of weathered floorboard behind him—the old woman returns with an armful of narrow-throated lilies.

“Do you need help?” Roy asks, but she ducks his offer with a chuckle.

“No minding me, dearie. How’s about a nice bouquet for your lady?”

“I don’t—”

He rubs at the blush climbing up the back of his neck.

“How do you know I have a lady?”

“Military,” the woman huffs, depositing the lilies gently on the counter. “Officers like you—you’ve all got a lady somewhere—that uniform, that _smile_ , I imagine a whole legion of admirers.”

She pulls a pair of gardening shears from her apron pocket and pauses, finger tapping the tip of her nose.

“But you,” she says. “Those eyes? You’ve got a lady _special_ somewhere. And a special lady always needs special attention.”

Roy laughs with her, slipping a hand into his pocket. The billfold inside is too thin for indulgences.

“Thank you,” he says, “but I’m afraid I can’t afford much, and I won’t take any charity.”

She purses her lips.

“No charity? Alright, then take a gift.”

She reaches across the counter and plucks a single rose from the arrangement—still more bud than bloom, stem stripped of thorns and glistening green.

“I couldn’t possibly—”

“By the look of you,” the woman says, waving away his protest with the hand still holding the shears, “you’re soon for the front. Give the lady something to hold onto, until you return.”

She holds the rose out, and there is something sad in her eyes.

“Please, dearie,” she says. “For an old woman with no officer of her own.”

The rain has let up, but Roy shields the rose with an open hand, leaning awkwardly against the school’s gate. He waits an hour, shivering at sunset, before the doors open and Riza exits, frowning, eyes on the ground flying beneath her feet.

She walks right past—not even looking up, and Roy stumbles forward belatedly.

“Riza!”

Her head snaps around, and she stops, and he’s standing with one arm stretched out and the rose at the very tips of his fingers.

“This is for you,” he says, blushing at her bemused stare. “I thought you might—you might...like it.”

They walk in silence to a little bistro near the station, and Riza sets the rose in her water glass. They stay silent until the food arrives.

“It went alright,” she sighs, answering his nervous glances. “I passed. First in rank for my year, too.”

“Congratulations!”

“They sent my scores along to the university in East City,” she continues flatly. “I’ve been accepted.”

“Riza, that’s—that’s great. That’s _amazing_.”

She shrugs, picking at her nails.

“Isn’t it?” Roy says hesitantly. “East City—you could study anything you wanted out there. You could—”

“They didn’t even _ask_ me.”

She’s half-turned from him, staring out into the street. The rose trembles in its cup.

“They just assumed I’d—you know they don’t even award _real degrees_ to women?”

“Still...East City. You could get away from here. Away from the house, away from...from everything.”

She doesn’t answer or say anything else for a while—they finish eating in silence and then start back for the square. The carriage won’t be around again for another hour, but the rain has stopped, so they find a bench and sit. Riza sets the rose between them.

“Look, if you don’t want to go, then don’t go,” Roy says.

“It’s not that I—it’s not about that.”

She sighs, and kicks at the pavement, and her hand closes over the rose stem.

“Riza,” Roy says quietly. “What _do_ you want?”

She chews her lower lip a moment, glancing at him with clear eyes.

“I want a family. I want a home that _feels_ like home, not just a roof and walls and a floor. I want to have purpose—I want to _matter_ to someone.”

Roy blinks.

“You matter to me.”

A wry sort of half-smile crosses her mouth, and she reaches up, slipping the rose into his collar.

“Roy Mustang. If you could be anything at all in the whole world, what would you be?”

He matches her smile and more—his hand closes around hers at his collar. The sun is starting to set, and the lingering clouds glow pink and orange, and the whole square is washed new and bright, waiting.

“I guess,” he says slowly, rolling the words around his head before he says them. “I guess I’d be with you.”

She leans forward and turns at the last moment, brushing the lightest kiss across his lips.

 


	8. Eight

**Eight**

“Look, lady, even if you had all the paperwork in line, I _still_ couldn’t tell you a damn thing.”

“I just want to know if—”

The man at the window interrupts Miss Riza with the slice of his hand over the counter.

“Take it as an object lesson on why you should always lock a man down first, _before_ giving him the goods.”

His eyes cut up and down, and Miss Riza steps back, hand raised defensively over her belly.

“Maybe you'll find some other poor sucker to take responsibility—or maybe you'll get lucky and your major's just enough of a sop to come back. Either way, the only information I'll give you is that I _can't_ give you any information on active state alchemists in the field.”

He slams the window shut—right in her face. Miss Riza stands a moment, staring, before turning back to them. Her smile is flat.

“Come on, then,” she says in a thick voice, as Al bounds forward and takes her empty hand. “Let’s find the hotel, and get settled.”

Ed glares at the guards standing by the door as they exit—he couldn’t see over the counter to glare at that jerk Miss Riza was dealing with, so this will have to do. He has to jog a bit to catch up with Winry as the crowd jostles him about.

“Let's just find the hotel,” Miss Riza says again, pausing at the corner of the block. The street signs have all been taken down, and maps are confiscated on sight by the military police—to confuse the spies as much as everyone else, apparently. They could ask, but everyone passing by avoids looking at them.

Ed clenches his fists inside his mittens and widens his glare to cover the whole street.

They find the hotel on their own—a small, out-of-the-way clapboard house hunched between a boisterous laundry and a hat-maker’s dusty establishment. The old woman behind the counter hands Miss Riza the room key with a frown.

“We lock the doors at nine,” she says, gesturing up a flight of narrow stairs.

The room is overstuffed—one large bed and a little trundle that hides beneath, a wardrobe and a lamp and a low table set beneath a small window. There’s a little coal heater set in one wall, empty and cold at the moment. Al and Winry explore every corner while Miss Riza puts away the empty basket. Ed wedges the heavy carpetbag against the bed, huffing with the effort.

They go out for lunch first, at a little bistro a few blocks from the hotel. The tablecloth is pure white, and the waiter holds a towel folded over his arm. Miss Riza orders for them and pays, carefully pulling each bill from her purse while the waiter watches hawkishly.

Al takes her hand again when they leave, sleepy and sedated by food. Miss Riza leads them back to the city center, fighting the cold wind with each step—they can’t afford the luxury of a hired cab, so they walk, slow in their overcoats.

There's no snow in the city—or at least nothing that looks like the snow they know. Brackish sludge piles around the sewer drains, and they have to step carefully around foul-looking puddles, to keep their shoes clean.

The museum is warm, if boring—miles and miles of trudging between big rooms empty of anything but paintings. Al and Winry love it, while Ed trails behind with Miss Riza, kicking his feet against the floor until a bespectacled old woman fixes him with an unwavering glare.

“Not your scene, I’m guessing.”

Miss Riza is smiling down at him, and she gestures to a bench against the wall.

“Keep me company? I could use a rest.”

So he climbs up, as Miss Riza lowers herself gently, crossing her ankles and leaning back. One hand kneads the curve of her spine, and the other finds its place on her belly.

“What’re you gonna name him?”

She smiles.

“Hadn’t decided yet. Any suggestions?”

“Granny says you should look to the family. Me and Alphonse were named after uncles or great uncles or something.”

“Well, I don’t have any uncles,” Miss Riza says, frowning. “Couldn’t speak to any great uncles, on either side. The only relative I ever knew was my father.”

“What was his name?”

“Berthold.”

She makes a face.

“But I’d never punish an innocent baby with _that_.”

“What about your mom?”

“Liesel. But that wasn’t her real name.”

“She changed it?”

Miss Riza nods.

“Her real name was Elisabeth. She changed it when she ran away from home. She was just about my age when she had me. But she had some troubles, and...I didn’t know her.”

She has that faraway look in her eyes again—staring at something he can never quite seem to see.

“What was your mother’s name?” she asks.

“Trisha.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“She’d like you.”

“Think so?”

“Yeah,” Ed says, nodding. _She will_.

Miss Riza smiles at him, gaze fixed firm on his.

“Why don’t you go gather up Winry and your brother? We should start heading back.”

“Yes, Miss Riza.”

They walk with the wind this time—not that it helps much. Al and Winry take Miss Riza’s hands while Ed marches ahead.

By chance, they pass the post office again. The guards outside are different from the guards this morning, but it feels good to glare again. A steady line of soldiers streams out from the front doors—shift ending, by Ed’s guess.

“Excuse me, miss?”

A man approaches them cautiously—uniform and narrow eyes and a mop of hair falling into his face, shaved short on both sides in military fashion. He addresses Miss Riza with a little bow.

“Excuse me,” he says again. “But you were just in the post office this morning around ten-hundred hours, inquiring about the status of a state alchemist named Roy Mustang.”

Miss Riza turns to him, shifting Al and Winry behind her.

“Yes, but—”

“Warrant Officer Aakster was the man you were speaking to. He told you that he was unable to give you any information on state alchemists currently active in the field.”

“Yes,” Miss Riza says hesitantly. “And who you are, sir?”

“Corporal Vato Falman, miss. If I may, I have a few questions.”

“I’m sorry, but we’re on our way back to our hotel—you understand, it’s been quite a long day—”

“Please,” the corporal says, holding up a hand. “Just a few questions.”

“Okay,” Miss Riza says weakly. Winry peeks around Miss Riza's skirt, but Ed plants himself firmly at her side, frowning.

“The man you were seeking information on—what was his unit?”

“Seven-oh-second infantry. Third regiment.”

“Is he older than twenty-five?”

“No. Twenty-three. Twenty-four, in the spring.”

“Any distinguishing facial scars or automail limbs?”

“No, and... _no_. Why are you—?”

Again, he raises a hand.

“Please, just a few more. Hair color?”

“Black—and his eyes are dark, too. A grey-blue.”

“Height?”

“Around 170 centimeters.”

“But less than 180?”

“Yes.”

“Place of birth?”

“Central. He was raised there, by an aunt.”

He nods twice, gaze fixed on a point past Miss Riza’s shoulder. Ed turns to look, but sees nothing particularly interesting. Adults must just see things that he can’t, he decides.

“Thank you, miss,” the corporal says. “As you know, I cannot give you any information on state alchemists currently active in the field.”

Ed’s fists clench.

“Then why the hell did you—?”

“However, I can tell you that no man matching the description you’ve given appears on the list of _inactive_ state alchemists, nor on the list of casualties for the regiment or battalion to which this Roy Mustang belongs.”

“So he’s...he’s not dead?” Miss Riza asks faintly.

“Or wounded, or missing in action. These lists were updated by wire only this morning, at 0714 hours.”

“How do you know that?”

“I decrypted the wires myself,” the corporal says, beaming with pride.

“And memorized them?”

“Yes.”

“The _entire_ list?”

“Yes. Incidentally, his regiment has the lowest casualty rate of any front-line regiment.”

Miss Riza only nods, mute. Al swings her hand a little, staring up, eyes round with concern.

“Does that mean he’s okay?” Winry asks.

“How come none of her letters have gone through?” Ed demands at the same moment, and the corporal looks down at them, as though surprised by their presence.

“Mail service tends to break down at the front,” the corporal says apologetically. “I can’t help you there, but I thought—”

“You can’t know,” Miss Riza says, and her voice is shaking, “what this means to me.”

She lets go of Al and Winry, raising both of her hands to cover her face.

“Forgive me for eavesdropping,” the corporal says, back stiffening. He glances side to side.

“More than forgiven, Mr. Falman,” Miss Riza manages. “Thank you so much.”

They get back to the hotel just at eight and sit for a heavy supper of roast and potatoes. Miss Riza eats with a bright smile, and Winry hums, and Al nods off, nearly spilling milk down his front.

Upstairs, they crawl out of their clothes and into pajamas stiff from travel. Miss Riza unpins Winry’s hair and brushes it out, humming, and Winry’s out in seconds. Al follows, slumped into his pillow and snoring.

The coal heater glows cherry-red, like their oven at home, and Ed focuses on it while Miss Riza’s humming fills his ears. He feels sleepy, but his eyes refuse to close. Tomorrow they will go shopping—tomorrow he and Al will find an apothecary and they will buy the last missing ingredients, and then they’ll go home and then Mom will come back and Miss Riza will have her baby and the war will end and Major Mustang will get back from the front and marry Miss Riza and they’ll all live together and the house will never be empty again—

He can picture it, perfectly, each and every smiling face save for two. The baby he can only conjure as a genderless lump of blankets, and the major is nothing but an empty uniform.

“Miss Riza,” Ed whispers, and she glances at him, arms falling back to her sides. Her hair fans out over both shoulders.

“Ed, I thought you were asleep.”

“What does he look like?”

“Who?”

Ed climbs up from the trundle bed, careful not to kick Winry. Miss Riza is sitting up against the headboard, and she holds the blankets up for him to crawl in beside her.

“Major Mustang. Your beau. What’s he look like? Do you have a picture of him?”

She gives him a funny look but sets aside the brush and reaches for her handbag on the nightstand. On instinct, Ed hunches up, laying his head beside her belly. The baby’s heart is a gentle, muted beat against his ear.

“It’s small, but that’s why I carry it with me.”

She pulls the picture from her billfold—no longer or wider than her forefinger, it shows a man in uniform: face and neck and some of his tense broad shoulders. He has dark hair slicked back beneath a military cap and dark eyes, sharp at the corners. His smile is faint and nervous.

“They took this when he graduated from the academy. Before he got his certification—that’s why his rank is only warrant officer.”

“He looks different,” Ed says, pulling the picture closer.

“Well, he’s not blond like us,” Miss Riza says with a quiet laugh. “His father was Amestrian, and his mother was from Xing.”

“What’s Xing?”

“Big country out east. On the other side of the desert.”

“Like Ishval?”

“No, Ishval is…”

Miss Riza frowns.

“Ishval is in Amestris. The ruins of Xerxes stand between us and Xing. It’s a whole different country, Ed. Like Drachma.”

“So, we fight Xing?”

“Not yet.”

There is nothing on the other side but some slanted writing.

_Roy Mustang, September 1905._

As Ed hands the picture back to Miss Riza, he feels a thump against his temple.

“Well, now he’s up,” Miss Riza sighs.

“Maybe he knows what we were talking about.”

“That’s a theory,” Miss Riza says. “He seems to respond to voices.”

She moves Ed’s hand along with her own, following the kick.

“You should get some sleep, Ed. We have to be up early and out tomorrow.”

But they stay frozen a moment longer, waiting for the confirmatory kick. It comes, right beneath their palms, and Miss Riza smiles, kissing the top of Ed’s head.

“You need a haircut,” she says affectionately, as he slides down to rejoin Al.

“Good night, Miss Riza,” he whispers.

“Good night, Ed,” she whispers back, twisting the lamp off.

 


	9. Nine

**Nine**

The morning is bright, but it’s only an illusion: they wash and dress and pack up, and Miss Riza pays the old woman after breakfast, but when they step outside, it’s twice as cold as yesterday.

Miss Riza checks her billfold and shakes her head after a moment, kneeling to fix their scarves.

“The sooner we get there, the sooner we’re warm.”

Winry skips ahead, over-excited about the prospect of a new dress. Al and Ed follow, less enthused.

They enter the market district and then two more blocks until a dress-shop they can afford. Winry disappears between the bolts of fabric while Miss Riza stands grimacing and shifting in her boots.

“A chair for the lady, perhaps?” the shopkeeper suggests, gesturing to an over-stuffed armchair set near the window. “While we attend the little miss.”

“Thank you,” Miss Riza says, and she settles back with great sigh. Ed gives Al a quick look—this might prove their only chance.

“Miss Riza,” Ed says carefully. “Can we ask you something?”

“You just did,” Miss Riza replies, brow raised. “What do you need, boys?”

“See, we passed an apothecary on our way here, and we were wondering if—”

“—because Mr. Bohn's shop just has carbon, because they needed everything for the war and—”

“—and we just want to try transmuting with something _else_. Otherwise we're never gonna learn—”

“Okay, _okay_ ,” Miss Riza says, holding up both hands. “If it's on the way to the station, we can stop in on our way there.”

“But what if it closes before then?” Ed demands. “And that's just more standing for you, and what if we miss the train—?”

“And what if you forget the rules?” Miss Riza replies mildly. “Stay in sight, stay together...?”

“Please, Miss Riza?”

“If you'll excuse the intrusion,” the shopkeeper says, bending a little too far into Ed's space, “there's an apothecary right across the street. Very reputable—you can see the doorway from here.”

Miss Riza follows the line of his gesture, reluctantly.

“ _Please_ , Miss Riza?” Ed repeats. “We'll just be a couple minutes.”

The fatigue must be getting to her—with another reluctant look out, Miss Riza sighs and reaches for her handbag.

“Fifteen minutes and not a millisecond more.”

The shopkeeper is polite enough to disappear as Miss Riza counts out the bills—a thousand cens _each_ —with an expression that grows more stern by the moment.

“Promise me,” she says. “Fifteen minutes, or I'll have you collected.”

“Yes, Miss Riza.”

Ed takes Al's hand outside, and they look both ways before crossing, excitement pushing them against the wind. Ed waits until they're safely inside the shop before pulling the list from his coat pocket. _Sulfur, fluorine, phosphorus, magnesium, copper—_ he hadn't thought to put them in any kind of order, by atomic number or amount needed or anything.

He'd written it hastily, on the back of an old recipe for bread.

The apothecary holds no other customers—a bell overhead announced their entry, but no one appears behind the counter. The aisles are narrow and stacked high on either side of them—bottles and bags and open boxes with scoops dangling from twisted cord. Ed steps forward, frowning. Al holds tight to the back of Ed's coat, ducking his head.

“Hey!” Ed shouts at the counter. “Someone here? Are you open?”

There's a shuffling bit of noise, and a man appears behind the counter, climbing up an unseen set of stairs. He is pole-thin and gangly, with patched clothes and crumbs spilling from his open lips.

“Yes, sorry, welcome to Charnock’s—”

He has a napkin folded over his collar, and he looks around the shop, confused.

“Down here,” Ed says grudgingly, and the man gives an over-dramatic double-take.

“Well, begging your pardon, young masters,” he says, dabbing stew from his beard. “How can I be of service to you?”

“Here,” Ed says, shoving the list at him. “We need this.”

The man reads down the list, lips moving silently with each word, eyebrows rising higher and higher until they have nearly melded with his hairline. When finished, he peers over the paper’s top edge with a rodent’s searching stare.

“All this, eh?” he says. “ Brewing something special?”

“We're students. Our master needs it for her experiments,,” Ed replies, arms crossing defensively. “Do you have the stuff or what?”

“Knowledge cannot be denied, I suppose,” the man chuckles. “You’re in luck, son. Got everything right here in my humble little shop. Give me a minute to put it together for you.”

“We have to travel,” Al whispers, just as he turns away.

“Eh? What's that?”

“We have to travel,” Ed repeats louder, stepping forward. “So make sure to pack it well. And be quick. We have to get back.”

The man laughs at him again, but Ed can't summon the strength to glare—heart hammering in his chest, palms slick with sweat inside his mittens. He counts the minutes in his head, glancing over and over at the clock behind the counter. He wanders the empty aisles a bit but doesn't browse—and Al keeps tight to his side, too scared to speak up or wander off.

Five minutes to the deadline, the man comes back with a crate, crossing to their side of the counter and setting it on the floor.

“Check for yourself, but it's all there,” he says, handing Ed the list back. Bottles and packages wedged together between wads of newspaper, all labeled clearly, with weights and atomic numbers stamped on top.

Ed had overestimated all of them—better to have extra in case of accidents or worse, _mistakes_.

“Yeah,” he sniffs after a moment, and the man tucks a rough stretch of burlap over the top, “all here. How much?”

“How much you got on you?”

“How much _is it_?” Ed snaps—grateful, for a moment, that Granny had taught them how to avoid grifters. His fingers curl around the notes in his pocket.

“Two thousand,” the man says with a hard look.

“Fifteen hundred.”

The man seems surprised at the challenge, and a smirk flits over his features.

“Seventeen-fifty, and we'll say I threw in the wrapping for free.”

“Whatever,” Ed snaps, shoving the money at him.

He counts the change twice before they leave the shop—Al holding onto his sleeve when they cross the street, because Ed is holding tight to the crate.

It's odd to think—as he sets it down beside the bags and returns Miss Riza's smile—that this is what they're going to make Mom out of. Almost like she's sitting right there, just waiting to join them.

“Find what you needed?” Miss Riza asks.

“Yeah,” Ed says with a grin, shaking off the lingering creepiness of the apothecary. “They had loads more than Mr. Bohn’s.”

“Just so long as you don’t get bored,” Miss Riza replies, turning back to the shop. Quaking with excitement, Ed settles onto the bench nearby.

But the excitement fades fast. Winry takes _forever_. Al falls asleep, curled on the floor beside Miss Riza's chair, and the shopkeeper brings them lunch—when Miss Riza hesitates to accept, he insists.

“Compliments of the lady upstairs,” he says, bowing. “She's a soft touch for young mothers—and you've a passel here, eh?”

“I suppose I have,” Miss Riza replies. “Boys?”

“Thank you, sir,” they say together. They save a little for Winry, too.

Miss Riza dozes until it's time to pay—getting up is an effort for her, and there's a darkness beneath her eyes that wasn't there before. Winry looks at the money on the counter with a little frown.

“I don't need _two_ dresses,” she says quietly.

“Don't be silly,” Miss Riza replies lightly. “Pinako wanted you to get two dresses, so you're getting two.”

They try to carry everything for her, at least. Winry's dresses fit inside the empty basket, and Al can carry the crate alone, and Ed shoulders the carpetbag.

“Well, aren't you a regular convoy,” the shopkeeper laughs, holding the door. “Mind yourself crossing the streets—lots of military up and down the last few days.”

Miss Riza thanks him, and they step out into the wind together.

The cold hasn't let up even slightly. After only two blocks, tears stream from Ed's eyes, even when he tucks his chin down to his chest. Miss Riza keeps a firm grip on her hat with one hand and steers Winry with theother. They seem to be the only travelers for the city center—everyone else fans out on either side, knocking them sideways and back and dangerously close to the curb.

“Mind yourselves,” Miss Riza says, more warning than admonishment.

The crowds thicken up at the station entrance—they’ll get stuck with crappy seats, Ed _just knows it_ , packed hip to hip with the windows fogged up by the heavy breath of a hundred strangers.

Soldiers are marching in and out of the station, and a group of MPs block the door.

“No civilians just now,” one says, shrugging aside Miss Riza’s polite smile. “Get around the west if you know what’s good for you.”

“Our train is—”

He shoulders them aside with little more than an annoyed click of his tongue. The main doors are blocked by similarly grey-faced men, so they go around to the station’s west-facing entrance and slam into a crowd.

Jostling, mixed-up, loud, and angry—they dodge kicking feet and shaking fists, following the tail of Miss Riza’s coat in a stiff line. The only plus, to Ed’s eyes, is the warmth generated by such mass.

At the doors proper, a station man has upended a shipping crate and stands on it, trying and failing to solicit silence.

“Please!” he shouts ineffectually. “Please, if you’ll all remain calm! The commander will return shortly with news!”

Miss Riza has come to a halt beside a thick support pillar a short distance from the man and his crate, arms crossed over her belly, staring up with a frown. Al holds tight to the precious crate, but Winry and Ed set down their burdens with matching grimaces. Ed reaches up and tugs on Miss Riza’s sleeve.

“Can’t we go in?” he asks.

“I don’t think so.”

“How come?”

“I think we’re about to find out.”

A military commander appears from around the corner—towards the train-yard, which they can see is littered with idle engines. With a little flailing effort, the station man steps down from his crate and offers it to the commander. He climbs easily, as though well-practiced at standing over everyone else.

“Your attention, please,” he says in a voice that echoes more than shouts. Little by little the noise dies out, and he surveys the crowd with ice-blue eyes. His ashy hair is parted perfectly down the middle of his flat head, and his bristly little mustache sits in perfect rank over his thin mouth.

He’s ugly, Ed decides, because of the cold curl of his lips.

“Approximately four hours ago, the Ishvalan dissidents launched an offensive incursion into our Amestrian lands with aid from the Aerugian military. They have struck several targets with mortar fire and artillery, including the southern branch of the East City Line. All civilian railway traffic is suspended at this time.”

He silences the crescendo of protest with a single slice of his hand.

“The Fuhrer thanks you for your cooperation in this matter, and he reminds you that in such times of crisis, Amestris stands together.”

And with that, the commander steps back down from the crate and, in perfect reverse of his earlier journey, returns to the rail-yard without so much as a glance at the shell-shocked crowd.

“Miss Riza?” Ed says, but she is charging away from them, having spotted the station man lurking near the door, waiting to slip in while the crowd consumes itself.

“Excuse me,” she says, grabbing a handful of the man’s sleeve. “But what am I supposed to do? I have three little ones here and no money to stay in this city another night. And I’d wager the rest back there have similar stories!”

“Short-distance travel—”

“I don’t _need_ short-distance—we came from Resembool!”

“More’s the pity, then,” the station man says grimly, wrenching his arm free and ducking back through the doors.


	10. Ten

**Ten**

They spend the night in the station—Miss Riza had recovered from the shock quick and returned to the crowd, rallying enough anger to get attention. The soldiers cleared out, and the commander had even made a reappearance, announcing that shelter would be afforded to those passengers who lacked other arrangements. Blankets and bedding from the sleeper cars were brought out, and they had found a stretch of benches for themselves, lying head-to-foot in a long row.

“I wasn’t raised by a western radical for nothing,” Miss Riza says with a quiet smile, tucking the edges of the blanket tight around their shoulders. They'd been fed by station staff—chicken and potatoes and bread—after a bit more agitation. “Sleep now. Don't worry.”

By morning, the camaraderie of being stranded together has faded—the lost passengers are shuffled out of the station and back onto the streets. In the cold light of morning, Miss Riza's protests are ignored.

“What are we gonna do?” Al asks quietly. They all look at Miss Riza, and all she does is look back, eyes wide. Ed adjusts the heavy bag on his shoulder.

“Just give her a chance to think,” he says. “We'll be alright. Won't we, Miss Riza?”

She flashes a smile.

“Of course,” she agrees. “How about a walk to warm up?”

They wander down to the eastern side of the station and enter a small bricked yard. There's a bench against the wall where Miss Riza sits with a heavy sigh. They pile the packages close around, but Al and Winry are restless.

“Keep where I can see you, please,” Miss Riza says, waving them away. Ed stays at her side, trying not to watch her face as she closes her eyes. Her lips are moving, but she says nothing.

Winry finds a little ball in the debris near a closed door, and she and Al take turns bouncing it off the station wall. They're safe enough from the wind here, sandwiched between the station and a brick-cobbled building. Ed can just see the edge of sign pointing down to the door— _Post Exchange_.

They sit long enough that Ed's toes get cold, so he jumps up, pacing to keep warm. A group of soldiers exit the door and stand in the yard's narrow entrance, smoking. They're too far away to bother greeting, but a couple turn to watch Al and Winry playing. They gesture and talk, and one nods towards Miss Riza. Ed's about to call Al and Winry closer when one of the soldiers stamps out his cigarette and goes back inside.

Ed looks back at Miss Riza—eyes still closed, and her hands are clasped loosely in her lap.

“Excuse me, ma'am?”

He twists around quick, ready to defend. It's a soldier—the one that went inside. Back out again, with a cup of something steamy in his hands.

“I'm sorry, are we not supposed to be here?” Miss Riza asks. The bench creaks as she shifts forward. “We just wanted to get out of the wind.”

“No, ma'am, it's alright you're here,” the soldier says. “It's just—well, me and the other guys thought maybe you'd like something to warm you up.”

“Can't have coffee,” Miss Riza says, touching her belly lightly.

“No, it's—”

He half-smiles and ducks his head, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand. There's a cigarette tucked behind his ear.

“It's just cocoa. There's some inside, for the kids too—not a lot of room in the PX, but we could fit you.”

“I don't think we have—”

“Please, ma'am,” the soldier says. “Gotta protect the citizens of Amestris—can't hardly do that if we're all busy worrying about you freezing to death on our front porch.”

“I suppose I can't turn _that_ invitation down,” Miss Riza says. “Al, Winry—come on. We're going in.”

The PX is more cramped than the apothecary was—more populated, too. There's an older man leaning behind a narrow counter, surrounded by the group of soldiers from outside. A radio occupies one end of the counter and a steel-grey carafe the other.

“See?” one of the soldiers sighs. “Havoc turns on the charm, and they're right through the door. Send _me_ out there—she'd've shot me in the foot.”

“Kneecap, more likely,” Miss Riza says, and after a second's shocked pause, the men break into laughter. “Thank you for the kindness. For the children.”

“Think nothing of it, ma'am. Everything in here's free, more or less.”

Cups are passed around—Ed and Al and Winry accept theirs quietly and stay huddled close to the basket and bag and crate. Miss Riza takes a cup as well, and they all drink deep. The cocoa is rich and warm, spiraling heat from Ed's belly to his chest to every finger and toe. The men introduce themselves to Miss Riza while the kids mumble their thanks.

“Sergeant Mein. I'm Corporal Langer—got Privates Hofer and Weiss over there—and this smooth operator here is Cadet Havoc.”

Mein behind the counter—Langer the one who made the joke. Hofer and Weiss had been outside, and Havoc was the one who asked them inside. Ed stares hard at each face.

“Riza Hawkeye,” Miss Riza says, setting down her cup to extend her hand. The other rests on Ed’s shoulder. “These the Elric brothers, Edward and Alphonse, and Winry Rockbell.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Langer says to Winry, tipping his hat. She blushes and makes half a curtsy. Ed scoffs.

“I'm guessing you had a train, ma'am?” Mein says.

“Not anymore.”

“Where were you headed?”

“Resembool,” Miss Riza sighs. “End of the line.”

The soldiers all swivel about to stare at Havoc, who wipes at a ring of cocoa over his top lip.

“Resembool?” he repeats. “Funny that—I'm attached to a convoy heading in that direction.”

“Convoy?”

“Not sure of cargo just yet—meet up with a supply train just south of the city, but I’m guess blankets and bandages. Meant for the front. Dire need of those right about now, I'd bet.”

“I don't suppose,” Miss Riza says carefully, “you could see yourself to giving us a lift?”

Havoc offers to carry their things, but he's got a duffel of his own, and Ed will trust no one else with the crate. Before they leave the PX, Mr. Mein and Mr. Langer stuff their bags with extra ration packs.

“Might smell like feet, but it'll fill your belly up,” Langer says with a wink. He ruffles Ed's hair as they leave, and Ed aims a kick for his shins. Miss Riza sees him, though, and shakes her head.

They head out southeast of the station, huffing and puffing with the wind. Mr. Havoc stays just a bit ahead, slowing himself for Miss Riza's short stride.

“Roads aren't closed—bit busted up here and there, by reports, but we'll make it through. We'll join up with a convoy outside the city and head south. These supplies can't wait for the rail-lines. All the _real_ soldiers are up at the front, but cadets can drive a truck just fine, right?”

He grins at Miss Riza.

“Were you training at the eastern camp?”

“Yes, ma'am. Second years—we’ve got our uses.”

He checks his watch and picks up speed.

“This way—almost there. Though I should warn you about my partner. He can be… a little prickly.”

They come up between stacks of warehouses which separated by flat gravel stretches and the occasional confused-looking tree. There’s a few soldiers about, ambling between the buildings or smoking at the corners. A truck is waiting at the end of the row, with a large man's backside visible beneath the open hood.

“Hey, Breda!” Mr. Havoc calls, indicating with a wave that they should wait a few steps back. He drops his bag against the cab door just as the other man slides down and slams the hood down.

“ _Finally—_ I was about to goddamn—”

He turns and catches sight of them. Al gives a little wave.

“Havoc, you were gone for an _hour_ ,” Mr. Breda says weakly.

“Yeah,” Mr. Havoc chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. “Funny story—busted line stranded a bunch of civilians at the train station—”

“Oh, no,” Mr. Breda interjects, hands up. “No.”

But Mr. Havoc plows onward.

“—and wouldn't you know it, this lovely woman and her three charges just happened to be looking for passage south—”

“No! Absolutely not—Havoc, how many times—?”

“Ah, _c'mon_ ,” Mr. Havoc says, grabbing Mr. Breda's shoulder. “Look at them. All lost and tired and aching for home.”

He glances back to them and frowns.

“Hey,” he hisses. “Help me out. Try to look sad and pathetic.”

Ed glares—Winry and Al are already pouting with cold. Miss Riza steps forward, hand on her belly again.

“Please, we don't want to be an imposition,” she says to Mr. Breda. “We're just trying to get back to Resembool.”

Mr. Breda crosses his arms over his own widened waistline and glares at Mr. Havoc.

“Breda, c'mon,” Mr. Havoc says, more sincere. “We can't just leave them here. It's right on our way.”

Mr. Breda chews his lip and then blows out a breath, beaten.

“ _Fine_ ,” he sighs, pointing a finger in Mr. Havoc's face. “But they ride in back, and when we get inspected, _you_ take the fall.”

Mr. Havoc boosts them all into the bed of the truck one by one, but Miss Riza has some trouble until someone brings her a stool and Mr. Breda holds her arm to steady. There's no gate to close—just flaps to tie down. The truck bed is wide and empty, and Miss Riza has them all sit at the very back, against the cab. They use Mr. Havoc's bag and Mr. Breda's as cushions.

There's a slot to look through to the cab, and Mr. Havoc's smiling face appears in it.

“We've got a pick-up from a cargo train a few miles down the track,” he shouts over the engine roar. “Butts up right to the road, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Then we'll be on our way south. We'll cross into a little farming village and meet up with the rest of the convoy there.”

“What sort of cargo did you say?” Miss Riza asks, brow wrinkled in worry.

“Whatever the train was carrying—food, blankets, bandages. Could be some medical supplies or even papers and pens. Won't know until we get there.”

His grin softens a bit.

“Then it’s right on home for you. Don’t worry—won’t be long now.”

“Thank you,” Miss Riza says, eyes closed. “I think we’ll try to get some rest.”

As they lurch out onto the road, Ed is reminded of their trip in Mr. Mueller's truck—the quiet, the calm, the twinkling approach of the station lights. The differences in this trip are stark: cold and loud, and no one fights for the view of the retreating city at the crack in the canvas.


	11. Eleven

**Eleven**

Ten miles outside of East City, they find the convoy waiting by a stalled train. The sergeant overseeing the unloading and loading of supplies singles them out for conversation, standing stiffly at the truck's back wheel, nose whistling with every exhale.

“Road gets rough going south,” he says, slapping both thighs smartly to stay warm. “Much further for you, then?”

“Resembool,” Miss Riza says. They stand at the edge of the road, having climbed down to make space for the cargo. She keeps one hand on Ed's shoulder while Al and Winry huddle behind, as out-of-the-way as they can manage.

The sergeant nods.

“Rough,” he says again. “Quite rough. Good on you both for taking the charitable view.”

He's addressing Mr. Havoc and Mr. Breda with the last statement, and they both pause in loading crates.

“Plenty of lieutenants wouldn’t even bother with civilians—easy to forget we’re meant to _serve_ the people as well as protect them.”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Breda says slowly.

“Just trying to help where we can,” Mr. Havoc adds. They exchange a fast glance between themselves and then hurry on with the loading. Ed had offered to help, but they had said no, smiling at him widely. As though the offer were somehow silly.

“Where we can,” the sergeant repeats, nodding and giving his legs a final slap. “Well, on with you, then. Convoy's bound south soon.”

This encounter, at least, seems to give Mr. Breda leave to relax. Once they're on their away again, Winry gets to sit up in the cab while Mr. Havoc walks ahead, pointing out ruts to avoid. The trucks cobble together something of a formal line on the pockmarked road, inching along half as slow as the meager winter sun.

Ed feels too confined by the gently swaying cargo, so after a few minutes huddled up, he hops down easy enough and running out ahead in the narrow ditches that line the road, keeping a sharp watch. Nervous of such freedoms, Al hovers between joining him and staying with Miss Riza, who keeps pace with Mr. Havoc.

“Are you from Resembool originally, Miss Riza?”

“The children are,” she replies, adjusting the delicate fingers of each glove. “I'm a westerner myself.”

“Coal-mining country. I guess you have that look.”

Miss Riza arches a brow, and she gives Mr. Havoc a smile that seems to be both laughing and frowning at once.

“Wellesley,” she says. “A few miles out. Not farmers, though. My father was an academic.”

“Escaping the drudgery of the big city?”

Miss Riza looks away at this, and Ed slows up, winding back up to Miss Riza's other side.

“Something like.”

“And you didn't want to be a mountain wife?”

“Bride of coal, wife of woe,” Miss Riza says, as though quoting something. Mr. Havoc laughs and then gestures towards Miss Riza with a jut of his chin.

“So what is he, then? Another academic?”

Miss Riza looks down, hand on her belly.

“An alchemist.”

“State-certified?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Havoc holds a thoughtful look.

“Hear tell they're surrounded by squadrons. Most valuable men on the field.”

“If a man's worth is to be measured by how many others must die for him—”

“I meant no offense.”

“I take none, Mr. Havoc. I...”

Miss Riza takes a breath, and Ed reaches up for her hand.

“I haven't heard from him in months.”

Mr. Havoc beams at her.

“I doubt there's a thing in the world would keep a good man from such a pretty wife and the promise of a pretty baby.”

Miss Riza smiles, but when she turns her head, there is something strained in her expression.

They make another twenty miles before nightfall, Mr. Havoc and Miss Riza trading idle chatter all the while. Dinner is sandwiches and a few apples that Mr. Breda portions out with a short knife. Mr. Havoc melts a few cupfuls of snow with his lighter, and they all drink deep.

“Should make decent time tomorrow,” Mr. Breda says. “They said the snow'll let up overnight.”

But it doesn't let up—they open the canvas flap at dawn to find the whole world painted brilliant white. The trucks ahead resemble nothing so much as low mountains, radiator grills overhung with icicles.

“We'll be up in a couple minutes more,” says a corporal from up front. “Bit of blockage up ahead.”

“A _bit_ ,” Mr. Breda snorts, shaking his head.

That day, they make only five miles, and for the last two, Ed and Al and Winry are cooped up in the cab, wedged shoulder-to-shoulder. It's Mr. Havoc's turn to drive, and he drums his fingers on the wheel all the while, obviously on edge without the usual cigarette clamped between his teeth.

“Give it up,” Mr. Breda says, climbing up the runner and leaning into the cab. “They're starting to shut down ahead, and I don't like the way the old girl's growling.”

He nods towards the passenger seat.

“Why'n't you kids hop in back—check on Miss Riza?”

They climb through the slot window, one by one, to reach Miss Riza who is sitting upright against a crate, legs stuck out straight and hands clenched in her lap. Her face is twisted in a grimace.

“Miss Riza?”

She seems to be radiating heat—and she doesn't open her eyes until Al touches her shoulder.

“Are we stopped for the night?” she asks, shivering, and there is a thin sheen of sweat on her pale face.

“Mr. Breda?” Winry calls forward. “Mr. Havoc?”

They pull to a stop beside a stand of trees—hardly enough cover from the wind, but better than nothing. Mr. Havoc comes first, through the back, peeling off his ice-stiffened gloves with his teeth.

“Alright, Miss Riza?”

She flashes him the same grimace, shaking her head.

“No fuss,” she says. “I'm—alright. Just a little fatigued, is all.”

Mr. Havoc nods slowly, and he looks her up and down, brow set with tension. His gaze focuses on her feet, just peeking out past the edge of the blanket.

“You taken these boots off all day?”

“Why would she do that?” Ed snaps, suddenly defensive of the looming men.

“I didn't,” Miss Riza confirms “I-is that—?”

“Not the best idea,” Mr. Havoc says. “Sorry 'bout this—I'll owe you a new pair, alright?”

He pulls a small knife from his sleeve and without another word saws neatly through the laces on Miss Riza's boots. She stifles a quiet groan against her hand, as Mr. Havoc gently pulls the loosened boots from her feet. Mr. Breda joins them then, shaking snow from his head and shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Ed demands, while Al and Winry stay quiet. “What's that?”

“It'll help Miss Riza,” Mr. Havoc says.

“Winry,” Miss Riza says with a violent shiver. “Would you mind giving him a little help?”

They work together, disjointedly. Winry peels off Miss Riza's soaked stockings, while Mr. Havoc rummages through the crates.

“Gotta stay dry,” Mr. Havoc mutters. “Which one had the—ah, there!”

He brings them blankets—tearing one in half and handing the pieces to Winry.

“Make sure her skin's nice and dry,” he says. “Then you boys get on either side, and snuggle up close, alright? You keep Miss Riza warm.”

Wind whistles sharply through the canvas, and Miss Riza's voice wavers with chill.

“I'm so sorry—I didn't mean for this—”

“I'd sure hope not,” Mr. Havoc interrupts, kindly jovial. “Hate to think you'd gotten sick out of some sense of not putting us out.”

“I got trench foot once,” Mr. Breda chimes in, bringing in water and what passes for dinner—strips of salted beef and hard biscuits. “Third day of training. Laid me up a couple days.”

“Civilian shoes aren't made for long marches,” Mr. Havoc says, shaking out another blanket. “Go on, boys. And you, too, Miss Winry.”

Al is on the left as always, molded into the corner formed by two crates and the truck-cab's back wall. Then Miss Riza, eyes closed and hands over her belly. Ed beside her, his own hand between hers, wishing he could transmute warmth into her fingers. Winry folds two blankets loosely over Miss Riza's legs and then crawls into the pile, settling up against Ed. While they eat—Miss Riza takes a few shallow bites, grimacing—Mr. Breda and Mr. Havoc sit at the edge, talking too quietly for Ed to hear.

He stares at their mouths, trying to read what they might be saying, but it’s too dark. Mr. Havoc spins his cigarette around and around, never lighting it.

“Tomorrow,” he says to Mr. Breda, as they turn back into the truck. “Right? Tomorrow.”

Ed sleeps fitfully. Miss Riza seems to improve during the night, but she's still pale and shaky in the morning, and she eats little of the offered breakfast.

“When will we be moving again?” she asks with a tight smile.

“Soon,” Mr. Breda says. “Get you home nice and quick.”

But when they unfasten the canvas flaps, it is abundantly clear that they will not be moving anywhere at all. Snow reaches up past the truck's high bumper—the whole world swallowed up in white. Mr. Havoc jumps down with a low swear and a quick apology to Miss Riza. The snow reaches up past his waist.

“Back to the blankets,” Mr. Breda tells him, ushering Ed away from the edge. “You'll fall right in and be lost.”

An hour passes before Mr. Havoc has dug out a path wide enough for the sergeant to come by. He speaks to Mr. Breda and Mr. Havoc in hushed, hurried tones before moving on through the ditch. Ed catches his eye briefly, and as the sergeant looks away, snow starts up again.

“Stuck,” Mr. Havoc explains. “North and south. Storm's blowing in off the lake and the mountains. Lots of people headed the other direction, and these trucks aren't exactly Amestrian finest. They're going to dig out the more _essential_ cargo up front and move on without us.”

“What are we to do?” Miss Riza asks.

“We're expected to wait it out. We've got rations enough, but...”

Mr. Havoc sighs sharply.

“To be honest, Miss Riza—I don't much like the idea of you and these kids freezing out here with us. And before you say—it's no imposition. I expect the boys at the front could use blankets and bandages as much as ammo.”

“We passed a little farming village about a half mile back,” Mr. Breda says. “Might be they could help dig us out. Maybe give us some food that isn't packed up in salt.”

“We don't have anything to trade or offer as compensation,” Miss Riza says with a little shake of her head. Ed turns to glare at Winry.

“Actually, Miss Riza,” Winry says, glaring back, before turning to the adults with an embarrassed shrug of her shoulders. “We've got something to offer.”

Slowly, she pulls the five hundred cens note from her dress and holds it out.

“I'm sorry,” she says quietly. “I wanted to buy some candy with it—I know I should've showed you earlier, but I just—”

“It's alright, Winry,” Miss Riza says soothingly, tucking a stray bit of hair behind Winry's ear. “The important thing is that you remembered it now.”

Mr. Havoc smiles at the note but takes it nonetheless, tucking it inside his coat.

“I'll go in the morning. Shouldn't be more than a few hours. Breda here'll take care of you, in the meantime.”

“I'm going with,” Ed says sharply. “I can help.”

“You're going with?” Miss Riza says, brow arched.

“May I _please_ go with?” Ed amends peevishly.

Miss Riza sighs, tapping her fingers against her leg.

“Alright,” she says. “Mr. Havoc could probably use the extra hands, but you stay close to him.”

“Yes, Miss Riza.”

“And you listen to everything he says.”

“Yes, Miss Riza.”

She stays silent a moment—probably testing his sincerity. Ed stares back, trying to look solemn.

“How does that sound, Mr. Havoc?” Miss Riza asks.

“Works for me. We'll leave in the morning, alright boss?”

Mr. Havoc beams at Ed, who tries hard not to frown.


	12. Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the long delay between chapters. A lot of things have been going on in my life lately, and I just haven't had the time to sit down and write. Thank you for all of the kind words and encouragement, though; it really helps!

** Twelve **

                Mr. Havoc cuts a path through the waist-high snow, whistling against the wind.

                “You doin' alright back there?”

                Ed grunts, too cold to open his mouth. Before they left that morning, Miss Riza had wrapped her own scarf around his head, and every inhale fills his lungs with the warm smell of her soft hair.

                “Couple more steps.  We'll hit the sign soon.”

                He glances back, grinning around his unlit cigarette.

                “Sure you're good? Could take you on for the last lap.”

                The view from Mr. Havoc's shoulders is dizzyingly high.  Ed holds tight, squinting against the increased wind at this new altitude.  Mr. Havoc keeps his pace steady, bobbing up and down through the snow like a duck resting on a quiet pond.  Flakes swirl around them in dizzying little eddies.

                It’s beautiful—but freezing.  Ed wraps his arms around Mr. Havoc’s helmet and buries his face in the crook of an elbow.

                The trip has to have been more than half a mile—Ed can feel each stomp of Mr. Havoc’s boots and then the sudden, jarring stop as they turn into the wind.

                “Safe and sound,” Mr. Havoc says, pointing to a mostly-obscured sign.  To Ed’s eyes, all it says is _ery arm_.  There’s a dark lantern swinging alongside the sign.  The yard beyond appears as a wide hollow between two mountains—a matching lantern post near the barn paints the edge of the road.

                “How do you know anyone lives here?” Ed grouses, and the barn door opens wide on a sleigh with a pair of heavy horses puffing clouds of warm air.

                Mr. Havoc raises an arm in salute, waving patiently until the team pulls level.

                “You seem a long way from the army, boy!”

                “I think took a wrong turn, sir.”

                “What luck for you it’s brought you ‘round my doorstep, then.”

                Somewhere in that depth of fur and blankets is a man.  He wheezes and puffs himself to the surface with great effort—emerging from the cocoon to squint down at them.

                “This one looks a bit small for the front,” he sniffs, and Ed scowls.

                “We’re stuck up on the road,” Mr. Havoc says. “Convoy snowed in.  They dug out the ammo and the guns—”

                “And left the rest for a sunny day?”

                “I can’t offer you the cargo to trade, but we could—”

                “Nonsense,” the man says, one fist flailing out from the furs. “Civic duty to help the military.  Toss that wee package over the rail and grab a runner—we’ll swing back to the house to collect the troops.”

                Scowling still, Ed scrambles up into the sleigh and immediately sinks to the bottom of the bench.  The man makes a little hollow for him in the furs, while Mr. Havoc steps up onto the running board.

                “Achim!” the man says.

                “Your health,” Ed responds grudgingly, and the man roars with laughter.

                “My _name_ , boy!” he says. “Achim Fuery at your service.”

                “'M Jean Havoc, and the charmer's Ed Elric.”

                “Ed- _ward_ ,” Ed corrects, as Mr. Fuery snaps the reigns over the horses' flanks and starts the sleigh on a slow arc left.

                “Not so formal for _Mr. Elric_?” Mr. Fuery says, laughing loud again.  Even Mr. Havoc joins with a chuckle.

                They take far too long to reach the farmhouse, by Ed's reckoning.

                “Erna!”

                Silence greets Mr. Fuery's bellow, so he tries again.

                “Er- _na_!”

                “Quiet with that racket—we've only just got the hens to go down.”

                The front door opens, and Ed is scooped inside in a dusting of snow.  For a moment he can only stand, dazed by the warmth radiating from the blazing iron stove that occupies the center of the room.

                Mr. Havoc nudges him inward.

                “Go on, an' get warm while you can.”

                Erna is a match for Achim in every way: stout and loud, covered head to foot in furs and pushing her way through the room.  She puffs about with a steaming pitcher and mugs, brushing snow from everyone’s head and shoulders.

                “You look a might young to be papa to this little one,” she says, peering up at Mr. Havoc.  Ed feels his own cheeks burning—but that just might be the cold.

                The Fuery farmhouse seems massive after two nights in the back of a military truck.  All of the furniture clusters around the stove—every chair built of thick timbers, with overstuffed cushions and heavy blankets draped everywhere.  There’s a strong smell of baking bread, and Ed can see a couple of fresh pheasants hanging near the window.

                Ed hears his stomach rumble and only hopes no one else can.

                “They sent the _real_ supplies up front—leaving the rest to dig themselves out.  Problem is, we’ve all taken on civilians.  Just ‘cause the trains stop don’t mean people stop needing to get where they’re going.”

                “Thought that one looked too little to enlist.”

                Mr. Havoc chuckles.

                “We picked him up in East City, along with a brother and sister and their minder.  Poor thing—husband's at the front and she's expecting a little one any day.”

                He says all of this quietly, leaning in to speak closely to the Fuerys, glancing often at Ed, as though the whole affair was meant to be kept quiet from him.  Ed can only frown, sipping at the cider pushed into his hands and glaring from deep in his collar.  A girl—broad-shouldered and near Miss Riza's age—piles a few of the nearby blankets onto Ed’s shoulders.

                “We have nothing to offer in trade.  No money but a 500-cens note.”

                “Put that away,” Mrs. Fuery says sternly. “This isn’t a bed-and-breakfast--it’s civic duty.  We’re not so hard up on winter that we can’t spare some provisions and a bit of labor.”

                “I can show you where we’re dug in,” Mr. Havoc says, face splitting in a wide grin. “There’s three trucks with seven civilians, plus ours makes eleven.”

                “Minus one for what you’ve brought us already, then.  Shouldn’t be a trouble.  We’ve got shovels in the barn and plenty of room for travelers.  Leave the little one for collateral, and Achim will gather the hands for work.”

                “I’m coming back with,” Ed interjects, pushing out from his pile.  Mr. Fuery meets his glare with a half-smile. “Miss Riza said I’m to stay with Mr. Havoc.”

                “Well, there’s no talking down that fire,” Mrs. Fuery laughs.  She reaches out and ruffles Ed’s hair before he can duck away.

                It feels triumphant to return to Miss Riza as part of this convoy—there are enough Fuery boys to drive three sledges and a cart of shovels besides, every one whistling and cherry-nosed in the cold.  Mr. Breda claps Mr. Havoc on the back a few times.

                “Every once in a while,” he says, “you country boys get a few things right.”

                Al and Winry hop on his shoulders while Mr. Havoc carries Miss Riza, bridal-style, to the closest sledge.  In the flurry of fuss it takes to tuck her beneath the covers, Ed slips back onto the truck and grabs the crate of transmutation—undisturbed as he left it.

                “Can’t it wait?” Winry huffs, and Ed sticks out his tongue in response.  He can’t just leave Mom out in the cold like this.

                “Were you well-behaved for Mr. Havoc?” Miss Riza asks, although her stern glance is blunted by shivering.

                “Yes, Miss Riza.”

                “And were you polite to these nice strangers?”

                “Yes, Miss Riza.”

                The other civilians are loaded up, just as the storm lets up and the light begins to dim.  It’ll be too cold soon to make progress, but the soldiers mean to make a start of it.  They lean into their shovels while the  youngest Fuery boys drive the two occupied sledges back to the farm, where Mrs. Fuery has set out a feast.

                “Eat up— _eat up_!  We’ve more than any of you can pack away in a night.  Blankets to go ‘round for all!”

                So they eat, they curl around the fire, they exchange pleasant words—Miss Riza has a chair to put her swollen feet up, and Ed stays close, knuckles locked around the edges of the crate.

                “I wish we could get a call to Granny,” Winry murmurs. “She must be worried.”

                “She’s probably having fun by herself,” Ed snaps, sticking out his tongue in response to hers.

                “It’s impolite to argue in a stranger’s house,” Miss Riza says mildly, eyes closed and hands folded serenely over her belly.  Alphonse is curled against her side, his thumb drifting dangerously close to his mouth. “Let’s not disturb the other guests, please.”

                A pointless command, to Ed’s opinion—the three Xingese merchants have already stretched themselves out in one corner and snore in a rhythmic wave.  A pair of burly men and their thick-hipped wives, miners they’d said, out of Youswell, take large gulps of frothy beer and speak to each other in rumbling whispers.

                “Kain, dear, see if you can’t get a signal on the wireless,” Mrs. Fuery says. “Mr. Kaube must have plenty to tell us.”

                With a pop and hiss of static, the familiar announcer’s voice washes through the overstuffed room.  Everything past the window is pitch black—Mr. Havoc and Mr. Breda must be coming soon.  The party feels half-empty without them.

                “Miss Riza, are we almost home?”

                “Very soon, Alphonse.  Our little adventure is almost over.  We’ll have plenty of stories to tell Granny, right?”

                She’s asking Ed, who meets her gaze and nods before setting his ear against her belly.  It’s only been a few days, but home seems somewhere very far away from them.  Miss Riza runs her fingers through his hair a few times—like Mom used to, when he was a baby.  It doesn’t comfort him now.

                The soldiers and the rest of the Fuerys don’t come back until well past midnight, when everyone else is sleeping through quiet dreams.  Ed watches wordlessly—but the glitter of firelight in his eyes must give him away.

                “Get your rest, chief,” Mr. Havoc says, patting his head. “We’ll be ready to move on soon.”

                He settles on one side of Miss Riza and Mr. Breda settles on the other side, like the closing of two mismatched gates.


	13. Thirteen

** Thirteen **

                They spend three days at the Fuerys’ farm, resting up and waiting for the road to clear.  Miss Riza spends most of the time sleeping, while Winry makes friends and Ed guards the crate.  Al doesn't say much—he hangs around with one of the Fuery boys, poking and prodding at the wireless in the corner.

                Every morning, Mr. Havoc and Mr. Breda join the farmers in the road, shovel by shovel hauling away the snow.  By sunset on the third day, they trudge back to the farm to report interruption.  The military’s finally remembered them, it seems.

                Tanks finish the work in a few hours, and then turn to lead the trucks down.

                Goodbyes are brief.  Mrs. Fuery packs them up with furs and fresh meat.  Miss Riza's ruined shoes are replaced by a pair of large, soft-soled men's boots from Mr. Fuery's collection.  The whole family gathers at the top of the road to see them off, waving until the horizon swallows them whole.

                As the trucks head further and further south, the snow begins to thin—just like Miss Riza’s smile.  A strange tension settles over them, shared in silent looks between the adults.

                The road is rough going.  They are not permitted to walk beside the truck anymore, sequestered to the cab or to Miss Riza's side.  The ditches are ice-slicked, and the ruts in the road are several centimeters deep with freezing water.  The trucks bounce and sway along, jolting forward a few meters at a time.

                They don't talk much during the day—news is exchanged at night, when they're sharing dinner beneath a still lantern and the engine roar is silenced.

                “You see those swells on the left?” Mr. Breda says, ladling out generous portions of warm soup. “Not snow—that’s mountains.  We’re getting close to the valleys.  Close to home, for you.”

                The land starts to level out after that, as predicted.  The ditches fill up, but the road stays rutted and rough.  Miss Riza spends most of her waking hours with one hand draped across her closed eyes, grimacing at every twist of the wheels.

                “Soon,” Mr. Havoc promises. “Just picture it, alright?  Over the next rise.”

                He’s off by some.  The next rise is hiding a line of tents—they are made to pull over by the sharp wave of a pencil-mustached lieutenant.

                “No further,” he says. “You’re entering a war zone.”

                “What the hell are you talking about?  That’s our home!”

                “Edward, _language_ ,” Miss Riza says sharply.  Her hand on his shoulder is more balance than warning, so Ed stays quiet, glaring at the man. “Sir, we are travelers from Resembool.  We’re simply trying to get home.”

                “Well, good luck with that,” the lieutenant says.

                The road block doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.  They’re supposed to leave civilians at the tents, but no one bothers to check the truck bed before they leave.  Mr. Havoc arranges the boxes around their nest and whispers to keep quiet.

                “We’ll probably be alright once we reach the town’s edge.  Catch some rest until then.”

                There's no rest for Ed.  With one hand on the crate and the other on Miss Riza's belly, he watches anxiously through a tear in the canvas.  They've left the snow behind completely now—the land is uniformly grey and pockmarked, empty of plant and animal.

                He could’ve sworn the fields started miles out—but maybe he’s just forgotten.

                “Edward, please,” Miss Riza whispers. “You're making me so nervous.”

                She holds out a hand, expecting him to take it.  Ed chews his lip, eyes tearing away from the passing world.

                “But I want to see—”

                “Holy _shit_.”

                Mr. Havoc receives no stern rebuke for his language—ungainly with her weight and recent illness, Miss Riza struggles out from the blankets and joins Ed, peeling aside the canvas for a better.

                “My god,” she breathes, and it is too late to stop Ed from looking.

                At first he sees nothing—just more of the endless grey rolling on and on just past the edge of the road.  It takes him just a minute to realize he should be seeing _something_.

                The town's welcome sign is obliterated to splinters.  Stone pasture walls he's walked beside all his life—gone.  Mr. Feldt's barn is reduced to smoldering ashes, his house merely to the flagstones of its broken terrace.  Trees have been uprooted and tossed around like a child's game of sticks.  Boxes and bags are scattered in the road around them.

                Mr. Havoc jogs a few meters ahead and then hurries back, white-faced.

                “Turn off,” he says to Mr. Breda. “Turn off the road.  There's a field path on the left—I'll guide you down.”

                Miss Riza seems to take some signal from him, wordlessly pulling the canvas back down and securing it tight.

                “Sit,” she says to Ed, familiarly stern. “All of you sit—you're not to look outside.”

                “Miss Riza—”

                “Do not argue with me!”

                He wants to— _badly_ —but there is something dark and frightening in Mis Riza's look.  So Ed sits, between Al and Winry, and rests his chin on his knees and stares at the rough truck-bed floor.

                The rest of the ride is sick-making.  They are thrashed back and forth as the truck lurches across the uneven path.  The lantern swings wildly overhead—Miss Riza braces herself against the shifting supplies, and Winry hides her face in her hands.  Al holds tight to Mom’s crate.

                They cross through three fields—heading westward, towards the river and the schoolhouse.  Ed is burning with questions he can't find the words to voice.  This journey is opposite of home.

                “Halt, there!  Way through’s a step back.”

                “That’s Mr. Bohn!”

                “Stay down,” Miss Riza warns.  The truck lurches to a stop, and immediately Miss Riza is at the bed's edge, pulling aside the canvas just enough to peer out.

                “Sorry, sir,” Mr. Havoc says. “We didn't want to take them by the main roads.”

                “Right smart thought, son.  Is that Miss Riza?”

                “Yes, Mr. Bohn.  I've the children with me.  Is it safe?”

                “Not as it was, but—you're back!  Pinako was beside herself with worry.  We all were, after the news came through.”

                Mr. Havoc helps them down, lifting them each gently and then setting them in the shadow of the truck.  Mr. Breda comes around from the cab to help with their things—Ed feels a spike of terror at the way he casually hoists Mom's crate into the air, but a quick check of the supplies shows no disturbance.

                Miss Riza disembarks with some difficulty, standing on unsteady legs and leaning her weight against Mr. Bohn's arm.

                “I'm afraid this is where we part,” she says to Mr. Havoc and Mr. Breda, who duck their chins and shuffle their feet and give her little smiles.

                Winry's crying again—she holds tight to Ed's sleeve, yanking at his arm when he tries to turn away.  Home is too close to stomach more delays.

                “It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Riza,” Mr. Havoc says, twisting his soft cap in his hands.

                “I could never hope to repay you for all the kindness you’ve shown us.  Both of you.”

                “Glad we could help you out, ma’am,” Mr. Breda says gruffly.  His glance shifts over the rest. “You boys take care of each other.”

                They're acting oddly—this is a part of adulthood that still seems to inaccessible to Ed.  Hesitancy and unease, which everyone feels but no one bothers to talk about.

                He doesn't care for the stress of long goodbye.  Somewhere past the hills towards the east, home is waiting for them.  He can't begin to consider any other possibilities.

                Mr. Bohn stands with them as they watch the truck disappear eastward.  He has a long bandage wrapped around his arm, and his knuckles are scabbed up red and black.

                “You'll not take the road through town,” he says, wiping the back of his hand across his brow. “They've seized all the vehicles still running, but we've got a team with the hay cart making runs every hour or so.”

                “What happened to your house, Mr. Bohn?” Winry asks in a quiet voice.  Ed turns to look—but there's nothing to see.  Mr. Bohn's house is gone, too.

                He takes them to what's left of his shed to wait, gently holding Miss Riza's arm.  They speak in low whispers in the corner.

                “Warm yourself by the stove,” Miss Riza says, and Ed scowls his way back to the corner.

                It’s brutally cold, even standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

                “I want to go _home_ ,” Al whispers.

                “Soon,” Ed says, throwing an arm around him. “Real soon, okay?  Everything will go back to how it was.”

                It is Mr. Mueller who brings around the team and cart—his truck, he tells them through ghost-white lips, was destroyed by the work of one shell.

                “All that coal.  Warehouse went up—fire took what was left of the train station.  The Sutters didn’t even have a chance to—”

                “ _Please_ ,” Miss Riza says sharply. “Not in front of the children.”

                “My apologies, Miss Riza.  It's been a rough time.”

                They both glance briefly to the back of the cart—the wind has chapped all their faces too dry for tears, so Winry just sniffles quietly.

                The back roads are empty and ice-hardened, pitted and rutted and cratered.  Slow going, _infuriating_ —it seems certain to Ed that they have taken a wrong turn somewhere.  No schoolhouse, no train station, no herds huddled along every hillside.

                “Pinako's waiting,” Mr. Mueller says, and again after a few minutes of silence have passed.  Miss Riza responds with something about their matching anxiousness, but Ed puts his hands over his ears and crouches over the crate.

                Impatience feels like a worm digging through his belly.


	14. Interstitial: August 20, 1908

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we begin, I just want to say I know it's been almost two and a half years since this story was last updated. I have never stopped thinking about this story and wanting to finish, but I went through some very low points in the past two years that I'm finally starting to dig my way out of. I really, truly appreciate every single review that's been left on this story and every single comment I've received either via PM or on my tumblr about my work. I save every review, no matter how long or short, and when I start to feel bad about my writing and myself, I go back and look through that folder. This chapter would absolutely not have been finished without your words and your support, so I just want to say thank you to every single one of you. I can't promise I'll always remember to respond to every review, but I do see them all, and I love you for taking just a little time out of your day to make mine brighter.

**Interstitial: August 20, 1908**

“No.  _ Letters _ .”

The corporal stretches each word for emphasis, eyes narrowed against the setting sun. Roy curls a fist on the battered countertop between them—three measly planks of bent wood lashed together and left to bleach beneath the arid sky.

“I heard you the first time,” he says quietly, concentrating on a level tone. He doesn’t think to call the insubordination—the corporal looks a few years Roy’s senior and seems resentful of it. With one finger, the corporal flicks the packet of letters away from the rest of his piles. “And you still didn’t answer my question.”

“I’ve nothing for you on that, sir. All I do is sort the mail I’m given,” the corporal says with a dismissive shrug. “If I’m not given the mail, then I can’t sort it, can I? And I haven’t been given any mail for you, sir.”

Fair, and infuriating.

“That  _ doesn’t answer _ why these weren’t sent out.”

The corporal sucks in air between his thinned lips.

“Right you are, sir. They were, in fact, sent out. Stamps along the bottom there, you see, sir. But turns out there was nowhere for them to go, so here they are again.”

Red ink, bled so long it looks almost black.  _ Return _ , it reads in narrow letters.   _ No resident service. _

“Why would there be nowhere for them to go?”

“Can’t answer that myself, sir.”

Honest, perhaps, but unsatisfying. The corporal blows out an impatient breath.

“You’ll have to move along now, sir. You’re blocking the line.”

But Roy doesn’t leave—the crowd gathered behind is composed mostly of the enlisted rabble, far too obedient to push. They don’t know him, but they know the rank pasted to his shoulders. The corporal only grins, never quite managing to match Roy’s gaze.

Pure, ceaseless futility—he can no more will the letters into Riza’s hands than he can will the sun to circumvent its usual route and perch for a few hours behind the day’s solitary southbound cloud. With a frustrated sigh, Roy finally starts for the exit, gripping the letters tight. The parchment feels ragged in his hands, and he looks down just as the light spears his bleary eyes.

Every envelope has been opened—the flaps ripped across and their contents glowing nakedly beneath the sun. He pulls the pages themselves out, held pinched between two fingers. Behind, the corporal calls the next man forward.

“These were sealed.”

Roy turns back—the corporal’s eyes flicker over.

“Indeed, sir?”

“I put money in them.”

“Is that so, sir?”

A path is made for him back to the counter.

“You know it is.”

“Well surely you must know—all letters are inspected, sir.  For contraband.”

The corporal’s smile widens slowly, revealing the glint of a gold tooth.

His cheekbone shatters neatly beneath Roy’s fist. Immediately limp, the corporal’s body is buoyed back by the hit, and the makeshift table splinters beneath their combined weight, boards torn loose from weak ties. The tent floods with men’s shouts and the hard, sick smack of Roy’s closed fist against the corporal’s face.

He is screaming—faintly Roy can hear himself, each word more ugly and indecipherable as his dry throat cracks with fury. The corporal’s face reduces so quickly to a pulpy mess, and he’s curled in on himself, wheezing, hands raised as a weak shield. Roy sinks back, shaking with the ethers of spent rage—strong arms grip his shoulders and pull him up. The crowd is mashing in and out of vision, whispering urgently.

“MPs. MPs coming up!”

Basque Gran tears open the tent flap like wet tissue, plowing a deep furrow through the crowd.

“What,” he says in a thunderous fury, “ _ precisely _ , is the meaning of this disturbance?”

Roy cannot speak. He stands, breathing heavily, blank stare cast downward as blood drips slowly from his knuckles.

“This desert heat,” says Major Armstrong, pulling the corporal abruptly upright. “Tensions boiling over. A little insubordination—nothing a bit of fisticuffs didn’t solve, sir.”

Gran stops in front of the corporal.

“Insubordination?” he demands, one thick finger poked into his collapsed chest. “That sort of behavior will  _ not  _ be tolerated. Alchemists on the field need their soldiers sharp, ready, and willing to follow every order. Understood?”

The corporal gurgles.

There is something glinting at their feet—Roy bends down and sinks his glove into the sand, pulling up only a handful of dust and one blood-caked gold tooth.

“Showers!” Gran barks, addressing the crowd at large. “Officers’ privileges. Enlisted men—you’ll get yours next.”

Someone is pushing from behind—Roy stumbles forward, following in Gran’s explosive wake. He joins the formed line, stows his personals, and stands beneath the tepid stream, clenching his bruised hands until they start to swell.

Showers are a rarity—the waste of water might seem almost hedonistic if any of it was drinkable. But the pipes are rusted, and the tank holds only enough for two or three hours. A few privates and scattered corporals reading the odds have taken up brief residence at the tent’s edge, quickly scrubbing faces and underarms with the runoff.

Roy turns, letting the water hit the blistered back of his neck, wincing as the sand sweeps down through every minor cut. There is a small cake of soap tied to the spigot, and the corner breaks away beneath his ragged nails. It doesn’t lather up much, but Roy smears the soap across his calloused skin and soaks.

He could close his eyes, he thinks, and become a child again—six years old and standing beneath the spray of river wash, waiting for Auntie’s admonishment and relishing the alien familiarity of the warehouse at delivery. Woven of mildewy brown brick and smoked glass, the warehouse stood half-squat over the river, so the boats could dock right in the floor, their engines gurling the river’s filth to foam. Roy would worry the stevedores’ heels, back and forth along the slime-slick ramp, as they unloaded a hundred barrels of beer and whiskey.

He wasn’t supposed to stand there like that. Auntie said the filth would make him sick, but it never did.

The shower cuts off abruptly, and finished, he opens his eyes and collects his dirty things and turns to join the exit line. New skivvies and shirt and socks—same sediment-heavy coat and trousers. He dresses slowly, avoiding the temptation to look up and see who’s looking back.

He has only one pair of socks to trade in. Regulations say two pair each, but requisitions operate the same as the universe: equivalent exchange. Rebuffed, he moves quietly along the indicated way.

“Here. Stole ’em from the pile.”

Off-white wool inches from his nose—Roy raises his empty glance and meets green eyes.

“Hughes?”

“Hey, Roy.”

He looks so much older, face dirtied by stubble and lined in shadow. But he smiles still, pointlessly pushing those familiar glasses back up his nose.

“Thought that was you in the last shipment. You been stationed out here long?”

Roy blinks, forgetting a moment how to form words.

“One tour,” he says slowly. “Waiting for my second.”

“Where’ve they kept you?”

“West. Like the other alchemists. Near Mehoud.”

“That’s right. The labor camp.”

“Not anymore.”

Hughes nods slow, and it’s easy to read the wince in his eyes.

“Yeah, we heard about that. Real nasty business.”

Roy nods too.

“They’ve sent my first company out to the line.”

“But not you?”

He doesn’t have to answer that—Hughes knows, just like everyone that pushes past, eyes averted.

“Well, come on,” Hughes says. “I’ve got a nice little cottage set up nearby.”

Light discipline is more theory than practice. Base camp stretches out nearly a square mile, arranged in tight clusters of campfire and grease lamps.  The men are loosely grouped by company, digging hollows in the sand for bunks or setting watch at half-crushed walls.

Mile markers are all that remain to delineate the corpse of Ishval’s neatly gridded streets. They count outward from the city center, and Roy watches their descent with a ghostly sense of eagerness.

Hughes is leading him down into the valley, through a twisting path that ends at the collapsed remains of a chapel. Pulling aside a pocked metal sheet that serves for their door, Hughes gestures Roy into the narthex.

“Home sweet home,” he says, the metal sliding back into place with a rigid shriek. “Until we’re reassigned. Our major was killed last week, so we’re slumming it with McDougal.”

Two boys stand watch at either end of the interior. The splintered pews have been rearranged as tent posts, giving each pair of men a little rubble-carpeted and canvas-walled room of their own. Obedient as a beaten child, Roy follows Hughes into his set-aside cubby.

There’s two bedrolls and a blackened oil drum for fireplace. A basket of rations already set out—as though Hughes has been expecting visitors this whole time.

“Like home,” Roy says, in a croaky scratch, as he stands in the makeshift door, hands clutched tight around his new socks.

“Landlord won’t let me paint,” Hughes laughs with a shrug, shaking the sand from both bedrolls. “But it keeps out the rain.”

It takes Roy too long to realize Hughes is waiting for him to sit. He collapses like a tower of sticks—joints brittle and sharp and easily snapped. His broken knuckles sting.

Hughes frowns at him, leaning back against a jagged crack in the bricks.

“Hey, McDougal, you up? Fix a bucket for me, huh?”

There is a grunt from the other side of the wall—a snap of ozone and light, and Hughes is handed a bucket of soft, pure snow.

“I’ll admit, you alchemists have your uses, from time to time.”

Roy sinks his hands in, grateful for the sharp bite of such a sudden temperature change. Hughes focuses on the food, just as domestic as always.

Military rations are only slightly better than starvation—Hughes shakes the mealy powdered mix out of two packets with a grimace of his own. A bit of water over the fire would finish it all up, but instead he shifts aside a few loose bricks and pulls out a concealed footlocker. Roy has only a glimpse of the inside.

“You should learn to make friends in the PX,” Hughes says lightly, as he pulls out sausages, cheese in a wax rind, and a slightly dented tin of coffee. “They come in handy when a requisition form or two gets lost in the shuffle.”

Hughes grins, more imp than ghoul in the low light.

He works diligently as Roy watches and soaks his wounds, until the bucket of snow has faded to a cool pink slush. The broken skin around his knuckles is blanched but clean. Roy sets the bucket aside, patting down his jacket for a spare rag to dry off.

“Not that anyone’s going to blame you about Kozlov,” Hughes says, testing a bite from the tip of his knife.

“What?”

In his pocket, Roy’s fingers close around something small, metallic, and soft.

“You mean the corporal,” he says quietly, “from the post.”

“We all suspected he was skimming—took money from you?”

“Yeah.”

“To your aunt, right? I thought she had a bar in Central.”

“She does still. She makes plenty of her own—no need for my help.” Roy says quickly. “But... there is a girl.”

“Hey, now, that’s supposed to be my line!”

Hughes laughs again, an awful and alien sound. He’s holding out a tin plate stacked high with delicacies—ration grits and split sausages, a smear of soft cheese and an apple, hardtack soaked in drippings. And there’s coffee, of course, percolating slowly on the stove.

It feels obscene to accept, but Roy has no other choice.

“ _ So _ ?” Hughes prods, just as Roy’s taken his first bite. “Who is she?”

“Riza. My master’s daughter.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember. You talked about them a lot at the academy. You went back?”

“Yeah. But he’s died since, and left her nothing but his debts. After everything, I couldn’t just leave her in squalor. And… I want to marry her.”

Hughes’s face splits in a wide grin.

“You old romantic,” he says. “So why haven’t you?”

“No money. No time. Same reasons there always are.”

The food is gone fast—Roy has no memory of the taste, but it sits heavily in his gut. It seems impolite to set his plate on the ground, but Hughes does, and of course it is only right for Roy to follow suit.

“I will, though,” Roy says. “I mean to. When we’re done here.”

Hughes nods— _ of course _ , he means. He always means.

They settle back into the bedrolls at the same time, a flash to the exhausted yet comforting silence of the academy’s endless bunkroom.

“Do you…”

Roy winces.

“Do you ever hear anything about Heathcliff?”

“No. But I didn’t expect to. You?”

“No.”

A runner finds them in the morning, handing off his message quick and then hanging around long enough to warm his hands beside the stove dregs.

“Orders to you, sir, and your X.O.,” he says to Roy, ducking his freckle-splattered chin.

“I have an X.O.?”

“You didn’t  _ really _ think you were gonna get rid of me that easy, didya?” Hughes says with a grin.

They move out before noon—slated for a long march with the rising sun planted on their left. Hughes handles all introductions, reminding each not to salute. The men seem an amiable enough bunch, a mix of young and old, largely Easterners with a Norther or two mixed in. The youngest is Central-born, like Roy, but he doesn’t have much to say. They’ve all suffered the war for years now and jubilantly welcome the lull of an alchemist detail.

“I was original company,” the sergeant says, and he insists on being called only Charlie. “Since 1903. We were all alright until that little girl got killed. Then it all went to shit.”

“Ishvalans don’t know proportional response,” says a corporal, Weiss. “Soldier who did it was up on charges, but they wanted to break in and lynch everybody. It was  _ one _ girl.”

“They see it all different than us. Kill one of us, and we take one life back. Kill one of ‘em, and it’s like might as well’ve killed them all.”

Halt and camp is called at dusk—Gran holds the officers for briefing and has the privates sweep out latrine trenches. Light discipline is even more of a joke this far out, so there’s not much need for tents.

“All waste,” Gran grumbles. “We’re keeping to south, boys—when all the real action’s out east!”

He looks right through Roy when he speaks.

“Action’s for the expendable,” says Hughes quietly, when they’re given leave to scatter. “But better to be stuck on support than thrown for canon fodder.”

“If they would just roll up artillery, we’d cut our losses by half and have a real chance to—”

Hughes laughs.

“Roy, you  _ are _ the artillery.”

So they’re set to marching drag, day after day pushing out the edges of rear operating a little bit more. There is only debris so far west—lines of empty bookshelves and abandoned shrines, temple after cottage after market, of stillness and the silence of settling dust. At night, a cold wind washes in from the salt flats, smothering their fires and waking Roy each morning with an acrid taste crawling over his tongue. Any bodies would have fallen early and long since been covered over.

The post catches up to them a week later: one reedy old stovepipe of a soldier, affectionately called Battle-Ax by the men. With a sour look, he hands Hughes a stack of letters thirty-thick.

“Marry her,” he growls. “That’ll make it stop.”

Hughes laughs, oblivious as always. Instantly, the rest of the company storms the Ax, obscuring Roy’s silent retreat.

Waiting for him in the semicircle of tents is a pile of embers, desperately trying to leap to flame. Roy drops down beside it, and the stuttered movement swings his pocketwatch against his chest. Instinctively he pulls it from his jacket and cracks the lid, free hand groping along his kit bag for a clean polishing cloth.

There will be stars above, soon, when the sun’s waning rays draw level with the lone remaining temple tower. Two miles east, as the briefing went. Tomorrow’s target.

Roy works the polishing cloth across the glass in small rigid circles, haze giving way to sheen. The metalworks inside are never in need of tuning or winding—the squad is always waiting to set their wristwatches by his time.

The watch cover is difficult. Dips and grooves and ridges, which all excel at hiding the sharpest grains of sand. He has to use a splinter of wood for these—his fingernails are always bitten to the quick and useless for such fine work.

As always, the metal seems to show no wear.  It looks silver, but must be made of stronger stuff.  Perhaps, as some of the younger men whisper, it carries a kind of protective enchantment—a superstitious vaguery common among those who mistake the cold science of alchemy for magic.  But Roy knows he is no more armored than the next man, helmetless and sweat-soaked.

His work is finished, and the watch glistens almost wetly as he tilts it, forward and back, trapping slivers of dying flame in the seal.

It will be seen by a sniper—he drops the watch back in its place, that nest of worn parchment and half-melted wax. His collected letters seem an equal weight to the metal, and he pulls them out in one frustrated fistful. More worthless now than a thousand whispered promises.

He peels the first letter out of its envelope but doesn’t open the page. He still knows what it says—can trace in his mind each sweep of the pen held careful between his fingers. The man who wrote those words was only two days gone from home. He hadn’t yet tasted the desert air or seen the rows of makeshift huts stretching long and wide between barbed wire walls.

A scuffle of movement echoes over the rise—only the men, finished with their reading and coming along for rest. Dust precedes them as always, kicked up into twisted wind that rattles the bones of every broken house and scours away the heels of their marching boots. Roy shoves the letters back into his pocket.

“You’re famous,” Hughes says, tossing a copy of the military newspaper across the fire. It lands a little close to Roy’s face, and he flips the folded front over. “Or at least, your exploits are.”

_ Mehoud—Rebel Camp Cleared of Rioters _

“They kept your name out, but they do mention an alchemist.”

The picture could be of any anonymous field, guttered in black ditches and wafted with thick smoke.

“That’s not what it was,” Roy says, without thinking.

“How so?”

“There was no riot.”

“Paper says there was a riot, sir,” Charlie says. “And we know military’s never got a reason to lie.”

The general had asked about his  _ range _ . A mile back—two, or maybe seven—how far until he lost control of the flame? Until his concentrate broke and the embers were left to pull back and pick up the pieces?

“It wasn’t a riot,” Roy says again. “They just wanted the camp gone.”

He turns to his bedroll and feigns sleep until Hughes takes his turn on watch.

How many more empty days? The men laugh, cajole, cavort, and treasure the tedium. Alchemist detail is the closest any of them have been to respite in so many long years. They drift far enough south to see trees again.

The trees—and the company—stand at the lip of another wide valley, the scraps of another village echoing with silence.

“That’s Aerugo right there,” Weiss says, looking around for praise. He earns none.

“We can’t be so far south,” Roy says—to Hughes, who stares only at the map.  But he confirms it.

“The whole brigade looks three grids off. I can’t imagine what the hell we’re all out here for.”

Roy turns back to the survey the sparse forest and then closer, to the cliff’s edge that juts up from the gathering darkness. A simple maze of low houses and markets. No high ground, but also no real low ground. An obvious target for tomorrow—and an obvious labyrinth of traps, if anything.

In the morning, the men are desperate to leave their greatcoats behind, citing the haze that rises sharply with the first rays of sun. But Roy forbids it. Close quarters fighting, they will need the white canvas camouflage for even the fleeting confusion it will buy.

Established strategy might have them take the main road together, dividing the enemy’s attention between parallel points of attack. But the company’s down to the strength of two platoons, and there aren't enough men to hold what they’ve taken.

But the Ishvalans have proven immune to common tactics. They prefer fast, chaotic strikes of two or three fighters—all the easier for flanking maneuvers, and they fight with a hunger that lends itself well to improvisation.

Shelling would be ideal, but impossibly. With the bulk of the Amestrian forces moving solidly east—taking all mortars in reserve with them—Roy and his alchemy will act as their only artillery. Rapid strikes, for maximum damage.

They receive orders for a standard sweep and clear operation, and head out just past dawn. Roy takes a detachment of two men for himself and leaves Hughes to split the rest.

Freed of the distraction of command for a few hours, Roy whittles the edges of the rebel fighters to a decent center. The heat of his flame is no true rival to the desert, but it rips the oxygen from every hidden crevasse and foxhole, forcing the rebels to scramble out for air. The men following him can pick off survivors with small arms, working one by one and watching his back as they advance. The rising smoke, whipped high by the valley’s turbulent winds, is the only warning the Ishvalans receive of their coming death.

At noon, Roy and his bodyguards rejoin the company, having pinned the rebels now to a single fortified building.

Hughes crouches against a wall, picking rations from a tin can.

“Third floor,” he says. “And along the roof, too. We don’t have enough men for a frontal assault, and they know that. We can’t even poke a head out to get a proper count of them.”

He offers out the can and fork, but Roy declines.

“There’s a crack between the buildings down left. Not really an alley, but enough space for one man to get through. Inefficient for a whole company looking to keep silence, but…”

“Give me thirty seconds,” Roy says, pushing unsteadily off the wall.

The Ishvalans will only fire when fired upon, so if he keeps low, remains unspotted, he can slip close enough for a precision strike. A wider attack might hit his own line too.

A flash of aftermath—Roy shudders, paused in motion, eyes blurring over. By sound alone he can pinpoint at least three shooters on the rooftop. Impossible to tell if more wait below, but part of him reaches out and feels the swelling crash of heartbeats waiting to stop.

At fifteen yards, he’s close enough. Hughes calls out for some blind cover fire, and Roy is halfway across the dusty boulevard before the Ishvalans can realize what’s coming. A single bullet pings the dirt just ahead of his feet, and he centers the explosion on its source, two or three feet past the roof’s edge.

He doesn’t wait for the rest of the company—takes the stairs he finds around back of the building two at a time, throat scratching with cinders. No barricades or entrenchment to impede: they had saved all attempts at fortification for the front. So not a prepared position, but a final stand.

The rooftop is stark white and absent of debris as he finishes the climb—not the tallest building in the valley, but it stands on enough of a swell give decent leverage over the surrounding depression. The sort of positioning that made three men feel like thirty.

Roy’s fingertips barely graze the roof lip’s top edge. High enough only to attach tarps—he recalls with odd clarity the field manual’s description of water cultivation in the desert. Pitch-soaked tarps funnel any scant traces of rain or dew to a central pipe that lead straight down to the house’s well. He remembers rumors, from civilian life, that Amestrian scientists had figured out how to seed the clouds with acid, poisoning the rebel country from within.

The rasp of a bullet chambered turns Roy’s head—an Aerugian-made Tapim infantry pistol, iron sights bent slightly from misuse or poor repairs. The hand holding it trembles and drips blackish blood on the stucco floor.

“Roy?”

“Heathcliff.”

It is not a question, for him. The Ishvalan man, taller and broader, caked in dust and the spray of blood from his fallen countrymen, the hem of his robe still smoldering, stares at him with naked hatred.

One of their last nights at the academy together, they had sat on the roof of the barracks to watch the summer’s final sunset. Heathcliff would be gone only a week later, with no notice or letter of resignation. But Roy didn’t know what was coming, and then, as now, he said nothing.

Neither of them move. Heathcliff’s gun pointed at Roy’s heart—Roy with thumb and middle finger pressed together tight. Both of them breathe hard, drained from the fight. In and out, in and out.

“Roy,” Heathcliff says again. “How could you?”

But Roy opens his mouth with no answer, and in that moment, Heathcliff fires.

He comes to on the way back to camp—the surface of consciousness bubbles like a churning river. The men are carrying him litter-style in someone’s coat, silent save for footfalls.

“You’re alive, Roy,” Hughes tells him, looking away again the moment their eyes meet. “Just keep still until we get a medic to tell us more, alright?”

So Roy wakes again in the tents, half-bandaged and attended by a tense silence.

The bruise on his chest is deep purple, edges petaling outward in blue and green, framing the sharp white point of impact directly over his heart.

“An inch any direction, you’re dead,” says the medic, tugging the ends of the silk thread into a ragged knot.

Seven broken ribs and a gash the width of the watch. They all stare at it: cratered deep and smeared with a line of blood, glowing white against the medic’s black bag. Roy looks away from it first.

“Guess it’s not as strong as all that,” Weiss says.

“I told you, a hundred times,” Charlie sighs. “It was only ever a watch.”

Hughes is the last to leave him alone.

“Just outside,” he says, once or twice.

Roy is meant to rest, by the medic’s suggestion, but his heart pounds in his throat.

All the adrenaline from the fight is not gone—had nowhere to go, and now it rattles insistently through his joints, throttling his bruised heart, pushing him to stand, to walk the edges of each tent wall to its end and then turn left to start again. Too much of Roy is still standing on that rooftop, staring down the barrel of Heathcliff’s gun and the sudden certainty that he is about to die.

From that rooftop, he could see how simple a flanking maneuver would have been. The Ishvalans had no support, no fallback position. Nowhere to run.

He should have waited for backup. The rest of his men were only across the street—so easy to stop, to wait, to stand still as he’d been standing every day since stumbling off that train from East City.

But glory comes for only those who would dare take it. He stepped off the train, and he burned Mehoud, and he went up to that roof alone. Roy went up alone, and he stood looking out to the valley, and when Heathcliff raised his gun, he did nothing.

The bruise still throbs, a heat gathering shallowly beneath his skin. The mountains have cooled the air around the camp—he feels like a stick adrift in running water. Not refreshing as it should be, but chilling and sharp.

Mehoud perched at the edge of a plateau—the truck had to swing around south to deliver Roy to the commander’s tent. Barbed wire and guns formed three walls, and an endless, yawning void for the fourth. The prisoners had made their own huts of scavenged scrap and stone. He remembers the perfect grid of streets they had laid out, the section set aside for hospital work and the section that housed a garden and compost. They would gather in the street for worship. An easy target.

It was a test, no different than the state alchemist exam. He had used straw then, instead of flesh and fat, but at a great enough distance, everything seems to burn the same.

It took nearly an hour for the smoke to clear and the tallest of the flames to die down, before the counters could walk the rows. And Roy had stay for the assessment, for the celebration and serious discussion of tactical applications. The general and his subordinates seemed sure the Ishvalan conflict would wrap up quickly, and then they could all move on to crushing Aerugo in due time. And Roy nodded, and he drank the general’s whiskey, and when ordered, he walked away from the ash heap he had made of Mehoud.

He had made the choices he made, and Heathcliff made his choices, and Maes made his as well, and there’s every reason to see it as immutable, an inevitability. He was always going to go up those stairs alone, always going to be shot, always going to stand alone in the aftermath.

The tent’s canvas wall snaps smartly, inches from his face. Roy has paced the length of the beaten dirt floor twice and turns to begin his third round. His gaze falls squarely on the watch.

They had emptied his chest pocket to reach the wound. Matches, a spare glove, and the stack of his letters to Riza—the bullet ripped through it all but stopped at the watch. A clean shot, through and through. It would have easily destroyed his heart.

A kerosene lamp burns brightly on the table, and he turns the flame higher as he sits, pulling these scattered pieces back together. The glove must be destroyed—it won’t burn, so it must be shredded. Patting his remaining pockets for a penknife, he finds, instead, a small lump of gold.

It takes a moment to recognize that it was once a tooth: the corporal’s. Smoothed out by distance marched or by time, the tooth rolls between his fingers like a pebble. No one looking would ever know what it had been—what Roy had done.

“Hey, there’s a missive here from—”

Even if he could knock, Roy knows that Hughes would ignore the option. He stops short, at least, waiting for Roy to stand, to sweep his debris aside, to turn and stiffly button his shirt.

“Message from the Fuhrer. State Alchemist eyes only.”

His pessimism expects to look up at a gun barrel, but Hughes stands still, envelope clutched to his chest. His glasses are poised to fall from the tip of his nose, and he corrects them, framing a pair of eyes marked with exhaustion and filth.

“Orders,” he says softly, putting the letter in Roy’s hands. “Colonel Gran wants them read now.”

The wax seal is brittle and crumbles in his fingers, rather than snapping across a clean line. There are two pieces of parchment folded into the envelope. One is boilerplate— _ To the courageous soldiers of the 702d infantry _ —and therefore discarded. The other page is thicker, edges decorated in gold leaf.

“What’s it say?”

“I, King Bradley, Fuhrer of Amestris—this being the three hundred and sixth decree of—”

“What is it?”

“The reason  _ why _ .”

They’ll have the newspapers back home sell it to the population in the way all such wars are always justified.

“They said the rebels launched a counterattack with Aerugo’s help,” Hughes says, and of course the intelligence officer has the official propaganda ready. “They’ve been funneling weapons into the country for weeks, and they hit civilian targets with shelling.”

“Where?”

“Some eastern towns. Farmers. Train stations.”

“Cutting off our supply. And we retaliate with extermination.”

He crumples the paper and shoves it at Hughes, fist hitting dead center of his chest.

“So you would have had to kill him regardless.”

“What?”

Roy returns to where he began, head in hands and hunched over on the cot.

“I don’t care.”

“Roy—”

“I don’t  _ care _ . I don’t want to do this anymore, Hughes.”

Hughes’s voice hardens to a chill.

“That’s not an option we have.”

“I can’t go out there again,” Roy says, and he is small, begging from desperation. “This isn’t what I—I didn’t want this. I thought this was all something else. I thought we were  _ fighting _ for something.”

“We are.”

“Worth killing a friend over?”

Hughes looks ugly in that moment, eyes blackened and narrow.

“He was going to kill you, Roy. I thought he already had. I made a choice, same as he did.”

“What kind of choice did he—?”

“What kind of choice do  _ any _ of us have?” Hughes shouts, and he’s crossed the distance in less than three steps, yanking Roy up by the collar. “We have a duty. We’re given orders—we follow them! That’s how this works.”

“I don’t want it to work.”

His grip loosens—shock.

“They’ll kill you for it, Roy. You know that. You know you can’t walk away.”

“I know.”

Roy’s chin drops to his chest, and Hughes steps back.

“I swore to serve. I just never thought…”

The cot shifts under his sudden weight, and Roy wraps his arms close over his chest. He cannot still the shivering.

“I never thought it would mean this.”

“Get up, major.”

Hughes’s voice takes on a formal edge.

“I said  _ get up _ . We have orders.”

“And that’s enough for you?” Roy says. “ _ We have orders _ . Even with what those orders actually say?”

The answer comes quiet, after a pause.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to live through this,” Hughes says. “I am going to  _ survive _ this war, and I am going to go home, and I will marry Gracia and be exactly the man she thinks I am. The man she writes those letters to. The man she deserves, to make her happy.”

“You really think you can just go back and pick up like all of this was nothing?” Roy says, pressing the heels of both hands into his closed eyes, hard enough to flood the darkness with a pulsing read, hard enough to hurt. “You think you’re going to be able to hold the woman you love with your blood-stained hands?”

He hears the rush of movement but feels no change—Hughes’s face is wild with anger, fist clenched to strike, though he stops just short of anything real. Roy is the one to look away this time, when their eyes meet.

“All that matters is getting through this day, and then the next and the next and the next. I will bury every horrible thing I’ve done here, and when I am with her, I will smile.”

Hughes’s fingers fall open.

“Do you understand me? That’s all there is.”

“Maybe for you.”

Roy doesn’t mean it in the sense that there is necessarily something  _ more _ . Hughes turns away from him, shoulders hunched, ready to leave.

“Get on your feet, soldier. We have work to do.”

The wound throbs. He can feel the stitches, outlined sharply beneath his shirt and the loose bandage.

“Yeah.”

It is an inevitability. He will rise, and he will walk out into a pyre of his own making.

“Alright,” he says, standing, wincing as he forces his arms into stiff coat sleeves. “Then let’s go.”

He burns the letters three days later, with no ceremony. They’ve been assigned a new sector to clear, and Roy walks at the back of the company. At the crossroads, they approach and then pass a burning barn. An Amestrian flamethrower has been abandoned in its doorway.

It isn’t even a thought. He reaches into his pocket—hollow without the watch—and throws the bundle with an errant flick.

No one sees. They march on.


End file.
